I only know that it seemed to me as if I had always loved her.

Things that took place before she came were dim to me, like events that had occurred in the Middle Ages.
Nelly was at least five years my senior.

But what of that?
Adam is the only man I ever heard of who didn't in early youth fall in love with a woman older than himself, and I am convinced that he would have done so if he had had the opportunity.
I wonder if girls from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour they cast over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat as mere children?
I wonder, now.

Young women are so keen in such matters.
I wonder if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very last night of her visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with her pretty self, and was suffering pangs as poignant as if I had been ten feet high and as old as Methuselah?
For, indeed, I was miserable throughout all those five weeks.

I went down in the Latin class at the rate of three boys a day.