It was a graciously American relation, and I am happy to this day to recall it.
The one exception to this rule of friendly distance was my chum, Florence Connolly.

But I should hardly have said "chum." Florence and I occupied adjacent seats for three years, but we did not walk arm in arm, nor call each other nicknames, nor share our lunch, nor correspond in vacation time.

Florence was quiet as a mouse, and I was reserved as an oyster; and perhaps we two had no more in common fundamentally than those two creatures in their natural state.

Still, as we were both very studious, and never strayed far from our desks at recess, we practised a sort of intimacy of propinquity.

Although Florence was of my social order, her father presiding over a cheap lunch room, I did not on that account feel especially drawn to her.