declared to her that it was grotesque.

She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge--?"

"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!"

She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. "I assure
you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?" she immediately
added.

"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my mind. "Nothing."

"And to his uncle?"

I was incisive. "Nothing."

"And to the boy himself?"

I was wonderful. "Nothing."

She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand by
you. We'll see it out."

"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a
vow.

She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her
detached hand. "Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom--"

"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had
embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant.

This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall
the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a
little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I
accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was
under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the
far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a
great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance,
my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with
a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning.
I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the
end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with me,
indeed, that charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have;
but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my
own. I learned something--at first, certainly--that had not been one
of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and
even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, in
a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music
of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was
consideration--and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap--not
designed, but deep--to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my
vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture
it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me