"George," he said, "that child's an atavism--a throw-back! She throws back to me. And I'm proud of it! Come and give your poor old great-great-grand-dad a kiss, my dear."
Molly saluted him and told him he wasn't the _teeny-weeniest_ bit old.
Then he chuckled to himself and commenced whistling "Sally in Our Alley." It was followed by "Sweet Alice Ben Bolt." Finally he burst into parodied song:
"Oh, Molly! Oh! Molly Barnett . . . Oh, Molly--where e'er did she _get_? She's suddenly flown To regions unknown, Along with a man and his aeroplane-_ette_!"
"How's that for a modern version? Eh, George?"
"Ah!" he cried. "It's good to be so young that you can feel yourself back with some of those old songs again. I heard of 'Dorothy Dean' and her 'flying machine' at the Tivoli Music Hall--over fifty years ago. . . . And yet . . . I wasn't so young even then. It's a queer business, George!"
He couldn't contain himself that night. He played the piano, sang dead and long-forgotten songs, danced a "solo" minuet to his own whistled accompaniment, and even showed us how the old-time "saraband" went.
"That's the first dance I had with your great-great-grandmother," he told Molly.
Had he loved that dead woman, I wondered? How much did he miss her, now that he had come to his second youth again? Was this rejuvenation ever tinctured with regret? Might it not be that the backward march through life was sometimes a journey of great loneliness of soul? All the friends of his boyhood, his youth, and even of his middle-age had died long ago. In a sense, he was a solitary figure, living in a world peopled only by his memories of the dead. . . .
I watched him go pensively up to his easy chair and drop into it with a deep sigh, and as he did so, some sixth sense seemed to give him an inkling of my thoughts.
"Memories . . ." he said. "They're strange things, George. Those little dances. . . . What visions they recall!"
"May they be only the pleasant ones," I answered, inadequately.
"Ah! That's the trouble! I wouldn't mind the others. One can shake them off. It's the pleasant ones which stick. . . . You feel that so many things might have been different--if only you had known. . . . The happy moment, the great joy--which lasted only an instant--and ended in nothing. . . ."