"Did you?" Her heart beat with delicious pleasure. "But I did not promise to come."
"No. But I looked all the same, day after day. What were you so busy about?"
"Oh, I don't know. I thought—that perhaps it wasn't quite—right;" hesitatingly.
"It will be right now." He pressed the arm closer that had been slipped in his. Then they were silent, but both understood. There was something so sweet and true about her, so delicate, yet wise, that needed no blurting out of any fact, for both to take it into their lives.
"And who was there to-night?" asked her mother, with a little fear. For Mrs. Forbes would hardly know how matters stood between her and Lieutenant Langdale.
"The Remsens only. And they sing beautifully together. Oh, it was really charming. Mrs. Remsen asked me to visit her. It's odd, mother, but do you know my friends have mostly fallen out! So many of the girls have married, and I seem older than the others. Does a year or two change one so? I sometimes wonder if I was the eager little girl who went to Philadelphia, and to whom everything was a delight."
"You are no longer a little girl."
"And at the nutting the other day, I went to please Felix, you know. But the boys seemed so rough. And though I climbed a tree when they all insisted, I—I was ashamed;" and her face was scarlet.
Yes, the Little Girl was gone forever.
Her mother kissed her, and she felt now that her child would need no one to tell her what love was like. For it took root in one's heart, and sprang up to its hallowed blooming.