and reserve by the surface false acquiescence of his tone;
"do you _never_ go away? I _wish_ you would! I wish"--(speaking between
laughing and crying)--"that you could take your abbey up on your back,
as a snail does its shell, and march off with it into another county."

"But unfortunately I cannot."

"What have I done to you?" I cry, falling from anger to reproach, "that
you take such delight in hurting me? You can be pleasant enough to--to
other people. I never hear you hinting and sneering away any one else's
peace of mind; but as for me, I never--_never_ am alone with you
that you do not leave me with a pain--a tedious long ache
_here_"--(passionately clasping my hands upon my heart).

"Do not I?"--(Then half turning away in a lowered voice)--"_nor you
me_!"

"_I!_" repeat I, positively laughing in my scorn of this accusation.
"_I_ hint! _I_ imply! why, I _could_ not do it, if I were to be shot for
it! it is not _in_ me!"

He does not immediately answer; still, he is looking aside, and his
color changes.

"Ask mother, ask the boys, ask Barbara," cry I, in great excitement,
"whether I ever _could_ wrap up any thing neatly, if I wished it ever so
much? Always, _always_, I have to blurt it out! _I_ hint!"

"Hint! no!" he repeats, in a tone of vexed bitterness. "Well, no! no one
could accuse you of _hinting_! Yours is honest, open cut and thrust!"

"If it is," retort I, bluntly, still speaking with a good deal of heat,
"it is your own fault! I have no wish to quarrel, being such near
neighbors, and--and--altogether--of course I had rather be on good terms
than bad ones! When you _let_ me--when you leave me alone--I
_almost_--sometimes I _quite_ like you. I am speaking seriously! I
_do_."

"You do not say so?" again turning his head aside, and speaking with the
objectionable intonation of irony.

"At home," pursue I, still chafing under the insult to my amiability, "I
never was reckoned quarrelsome--_never_! Of course I was not like
Barbara--there are not many like her--but I did very well. Ask _any one_
of them--it does not matter which--they will all tell you the
same--whether I did not!"

"You were a household angel, in fact?"

"I was nothing of the kind," cry I, very angry, and yet laughing: the
laughter caused by the antagonism of the epithet with the many
recollected blows and honest sounding cuffs that I have, on and off,
exchanged with Bobby.

A pause.

The sun has quite gone now: sulky and f