f she doesn't really wish to.'

'No fear! We shan't manage that.'

'And surely wouldn't wish to?'

'I don't know. Girls often can't see what's best for them. I say, you
understand that all this is in confidence?'

'Of course I do. But it's a confidence I had rather not have received. I
shall be miserable, I know that.'

'Then you're a little--goose.'

'You were going to call me something far worse.'

'Give me credit, then, for correcting myself. You'll have to help us,
Lettycoco.'

The girl kept silence. Then for a time the conversation became graver.
It was interrupted precisely at the end of the granted hour.

Letty went to see her friend on Sunday afternoon, and the two shut
themselves up in the dainty little chamber. Adela was in low spirits;
with her a most unusual state. She sat with her hands crossed on her
lap, and the sunny light of her eyes was dimmed. When she had tried for
a while to talk of ordinary things, Letty saw a tear glisten upon her
cheek.

'What is the matter, love?'

Adela was in sore need of telling her troubles, and Letty was the
only one to whom she could do so. In such spirit-gentle words as could
express the perplexities of her mind she told what a source of pain her
mother's conversation had been to her of late, and how she dreaded what
might still be to come.

'It is so dreadful to think, Letty, that mother is encouraging him. She
thinks it is for my happiness; she is offended if I try to say what I
suffer. Oh, I couldn't! I couldn't!'

She put her palms before her face; her maidenhood shamed to speak of
these things even to her bosom friend.

'Can't you show him, darling, that--that he mustn't hope anything?'

'How can I do so? It is impossible to be rude, and everything else it is
so easy to misunderstand.'

'But when he really speaks, then it will come to an end.'

'I shall grieve mother so, Letty. I feel as if the best of my life had
gone by. Everything seemed so smooth. Oh, why did he fall so, Letty? and
I thought he cared for me, dear.'

She whispered it, her face on her friend's shoulder.

'Try to forget, darling; try!'

'Oh, as if I didn't try night and day! I know it is so wrong to give a
thought. How could he speak to me as he did that day when I met him on
the hill, and again when I went just to save him an annoyance? He was
almost the same as before, only I thought him a little sad from his
illness. He had no right to talk to me in that way! Oh, I feel