y appealing to Miss Vincent he made their
conversation together seem as under her conduct; and she took a slide on
some French phrases with little Emile. Her young ladies looked shrinking
and envious to see the fellows wet to the skin, laughing, wrestling,
linking arms; and some, who were clown-faced with a wipe of scarlet,
getting friends to rub their cheeks with snow, all of them happy as
larks in air, a big tea steaming for them at the school. Those girls
had a leap and a fail of the heart, glad to hug themselves in their dry
clothes, and not so warm as the dripping boys were, nor so madly fond of
their dress-circle seats to look on at a play they were not allowed
even to desire to share. They looked on at blows given and taken in
good temper, hardship sharpening jollity. The thought of the difference
between themselves and the boys must have been something like the tight
band--call it corset--over the chest, trying to lift and stretch for
draughts of air. But Browny's feeling naturally was, that all this
advantage for the boys came of Matey Weyburn's lead.

Miss Vincent with her young ladies walked off in couples, orderly
chicks, the usual Sunday march of their every day. The school was
coolish to them; one of the fellows hummed bars of some hymn tune,
rather faster than church. And next day there was a murmur of letters
passing between Matey and Browny regularly, little Collett for postman.
Anybody might have guessed it, but the report spread a feeling that
girls are not the entirely artificial beings or flat targets we suppose.
The school began to brood, like air deadening on oven-heat. Winter
is hen-mother to the idea of love in schools, if the idea has fairly
entered. Various girls of different colours were selected by boys
for animated correspondence, that never existed and was vigorously
prosecuted, with efforts to repress contempt of them in courtship for
their affections. They found their part of it by no means difficult when
they imagined the lines without the words, or, better still, the letter
without the lines. A holy satisfaction belonged to the sealed thing; the
breaking of the seal and inspection of the contents imposed perplexity
on that sentiment. They thought of certain possible sentences Matey
and Browny would exchange; but the plain, conceivable, almost visible,
outside of the letter had a stronger spell for them than the visionary
inside. This fancied contemplation of the love-letter was reversed