of the Sawyer in a furious puzzle, that it was
impossible for me to answer as lightly as I meant to do.

"No, I can not say, Firm, that I wish it at all; unless your heart is
set on it--"

"Don't you know, then, where my heart is set?" he asked me, in a deep
voice, coming nearer, and taking the ballad-book from my hands. "Why
will you feign not to know, Erema, who is the only one I can ever think
of twice? Above me, I know, in every possible way--birth and education
and mind and appearance, and now far above me in money as well. But what
are all these things? Try to think if only you could like me. Liking
gets over every thing, and without it nothing is any thing. Why do
I like you so, Erema? Is it because of your birth, and teaching,
and manners, and sweet looks, and all that, or even because of your
troubles?"

"How can I tell, Firm--how can I tell? Perhaps it is just because of
myself. And why do you do it at all, Firm?"

"Ah, why do I do it? How I wish I knew! Perhaps then I might cure it. To
begin with, what is there, after all, so very wonderful about you?"

"Oh, nothing, I should hope. Most surely nothing. It would grieve me to
be at all wonderful. That I leave for American ladies."

"Now you don't understand me. I mean, of course, that you are
wonderfully good and kind and clever; and your eyes, I am sure, and your
lips and smile, and all your other features--there is nothing about them
that can be called any thing else but wonderful."

"Now, Firm, how exceedingly foolish you are! I did hope that you knew
better."

"Erema, I never shall know better. I never can swerve or change, if I
live to be a hundred and fifty. You think me presumptuous, no doubt,
from what you are brought up to. And you are so young that to seek to
bind you, even if you loved me, would be an unmanly thing. But now you
are old enough, and you know your own mind surely well enough, just to
say whether you feel as if you could ever love me as I love you."

He turned away, as if he felt that he had no right to press me so, and
blamed himself for selfishness; and I liked him better for doing that
than for any thing he had done before. Yet I knew that I ought to speak
clearly, and though my voice was full of tears, I tried.

"Dear Firm," I said, as I took his hand and strove to look at him
steadily, "I like and admire you very much; and by-and-by--by-and-by, I
might, that is, if you did not hurry me. Of all the obstacles you have
ment