dy, Nancy!
Even at my age it has seemed difficult to me to be brought into hourly
companionship with all that was most fresh and womanly, and spirited,
and pretty."

"_Pretty!_" think I. "I wish the boys could hear him! they will never
believe me if I tell them."

"And not wish to have it for my own, to take and make much of. I that
have never had any thing very lovely or lovable in my life. And then,
dear, it was all your good-nature, you did not know what you were doing;
you seemed to find some little pleasure in my society--even chose it by
preference now and then. My talk did not weary you, as I should have
thought it would have done, and so I grew to think--to think--Bah!"
(with a movement of impatience) "it was a foolish thought! what can
there be in common between me and a child like you?"

"I think that there is a great deal," reply I, speaking very steadily,
and so saying, I stretch out my hand and of my own accord put it in his
again. He cannot well return it to me, so he keeps it.

"And yet it is impossible?" he says, with hesitating interrogation,
while his steel-blue eyes look anxiously into mine.

"Is it?" say I, a wily smile beginning to creep over my features. "If it
is, what was the use of asking me?" I have the grace to grow extremely
red as I make this observation.

"Nancy!" seizing my other hand, too, and speaking in a hurried, low
voice that slightly shakes with the force of his emotion, "what are you
saying? You do not know what you are implying."

"Yes I do," reply I, firmly. "I know perfectly. And it is _not_
impossible. Not at all, I should say."

Upon this explicit declaration an ordinary lover would have had me in
his arms and smothered me with kisses before you could look round, but
my lover is abnormal. He does nothing of the kind.

"Are you sure," he says, with an earnest gravity and imploring emphasis,
"that you understand what you are doing? Are you certain, Nancy, that if
we had not been friends, if you had not been loath to pain me, that you
would not have answered differently? Think, child! think well of it!
this is not a matter of months or even years, but of your whole long
young life."

"Yes," say I, gravely, looking down. "I know it is."

And put thus solemnly before me, the idea of the marriage state seems to
me, hardly less weightily oppressive than the idea of eternity.

"How should I feel," he continues (he has put a hand on each of my
shoulders, and is looking a