Professor Wilson had been living in London for six years and he was just
back from a visit to America. One afternoon, soon after his return, he
put on his frock-coat and drove in a hansom to pay a call upon Hilda
Burgoyne, who still lived at her old number, off Bedford Square. He
and Miss Burgoyne had been fast friends for a long time. He had first
noticed her about the corridors of the British Museum, where he read
constantly. Her being there so often had made him feel that he would
like to know her, and as she was not an inaccessible person, an
introduction was not difficult. The preliminaries once over, they came
to depend a great deal upon each other, and Wilson, after his day's
reading, often went round to Bedford Square for his tea. They had much
more in common than their memories of a common friend. Indeed, they
seldom spoke of him. They saved that for the deep moments which do not
come often, and then their talk of him was mostly silence. Wilson knew
that Hilda had loved him; more than this he had not tried to know.
It was late when Wilson reached Hilda's apartment on this particular
December afternoon, and he found her alone. She sent for fresh tea
and made him comfortable, as she had such a knack of making people
comfortable.
"How good you were to come back before Christmas! I quite dreaded the
Holidays without you. You've helped me over a good many Christmases."
She smiled at him gayly.
"As if you needed me for that! But, at any rate, I needed YOU. How well
you are looking, my dear, and how rested."
He peered up at her from his low chair, balancing the tips of his long
fingers together in a judicial manner which had grown on him with years.
Hilda laughed as she carefully poured his cream. "That means that I was
looking very seedy at the end of the season, doesn't it? Well, we must
show wear at last, you know."
Wilson took the cup gratefully. "Ah, no need to remind a man of
seventy, who has just been home to find that he has survived all his
contemporaries. I was most gently treated--as a sort of precious relic.
But, do you know, it made me feel awkward to be hanging about still."
"Seventy? Never mention it to me." Hilda looked appreciatively at the
Professor's alert face, with so many kindly lines about the mouth and
so many quizzical ones about the eyes. "You've got to hang about for
me, you know. I can't even let you go home again. You must stay put, now
that I have you back. You're the realest thing I have."