Yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty years instead of her proper twenty.
'Lucy, don't you know me ?' he said, when the servant had closed the door.
'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully.

'I don't know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old town again.' She gave him her hand, and then they sat down.

'They said you were dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so.

We should have heard of it for certain if you had been.' 'It is a very long time since we met.' 'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr.Barnet, in all these roving years, in comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!' Her face grew more serious.

'You know my husband has been dead a long time?
I am a lonely old woman now, considering what I have been; though Mr.Downe's daughters--all married--manage to keep me pretty cheerful.' 'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty years.' 'But where have you kept yourself?
And why did you go off so mysteriously ?' 'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I have not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and yet more than twenty years have flown.