quite frightened at the exciting scenes, her eyes and lips opened wide. I do not say this to praise myself, but simply as a justification of the fact that in those days I could recite with considerable emphasis. In one place, however, my voice began to falter.

"Well, what is it? Can't you read your own writing?"

[Pg 36]"Yes—no, I mean. I think we had better leave off here?"

[Pg 36]

"Why? You've come to the most interesting part."

"I don't want to read it to you."

"Why? Do you mean to say you write such things as a girl ought not to know?"

"No, no! Anybody may read it except myself—before you."

The girl laughed, but there was something bitter in her laugh too.

"Oh, don't be anxious on my account, pray! We read, at school, things of which you have no idea. It is an old institution among us that every girl when she marries shall write a letter to her school friends on the very day after her wedding. We have a whole collection of such letters."

"And do you mean to tell me that you have promised to increase this collection?" I cried, with all the indignation of my youthful mind.

The girl must have guessed my anger from my face, for she cast down her eyes and said, in a low voice: "It depends upon whose I shall be."

Immediately afterwards she laughed uproariously: "You may read your love-scene before me."

I answered more firmly than ever: "I will not read it before you."

She understood and stared at me.

"You fear, perhaps, that I shall take it for a declaration? You think, perhaps, that I shall laugh at you in consequence?"

[Pg 37]"No! You will not laugh at me."

[Pg 37]

"Then what are you afraid of?"

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