m, it would be of no use."

"I am so miserable, Mary--if you knew how miserable I am, you would be
sorry for me."

"There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish
people always think their own discomfort of more importance than
anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day."

"It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things other
young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst."

"I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves
without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish. They are always
thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other
people may lose."

"Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when
he meant it. There is not a better man in the world than your father,
and yet he got into trouble."

"How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?"
said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation. "He never got into trouble
by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always
thinking of the work he was doing for other people. And he has fared
hard, and worked hard to make good everybody's loss."

"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It
is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any
power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;
but that is what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred ended,
languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything again. I'm very
sorry for all the trouble I've caused--that's all."

Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is
often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard
experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different
from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last
words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother
feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which
may lose itself and get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his
dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all
her other anxieties.

"Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me
tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not
seen you for a whole week." Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words
that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying
them in a half-soothing half-besee