"But who is the man, Elsie?" enquired Miss Fuller, really disturbed by this first confidence; for the girl was her room-mate, and had been placed particularly under her care.
"Oh, that's my second secret—I'll tell you that when you're Grant's wife. You haven't told me about your own adorer yet."
"How could I? One does not talk of lovers till they come."
"Oh Bessie Fuller; what a fraud you are! Just as if he hadn't been under this very window again and again: just as if the flowers that get into our room, no one can guess how, did not come from him. Why, half the girls in school have seen him prowling round here like a great, handsome, splendid tiger!"
"What are you talking of, Elsie?"
"No matter; I shan't tell Grant, he must think himself first and foremost—what a lovely sister-in-law you will make."
"Elsie, my dear girl——"
"Don't interrupt me—don't say you wouldn't have him: that you like the other fellow better, and all that. I tell you Grant is a prince, and you shall be his princess. He's awful rich, too; our horrid old uncle left him everything. I haven't got the value of a hair bracelet all my own—that's another secret. The girls all think we share and share alike, and I want them to keep up the idea; but you are different. Don't you see it would be horrid hard for me if my brother should marry some close, stingy thing, that might even grudge me a home at Piney Bend; but with you—oh Bessie! Promise me that you will marry him."
Here Elsie flung down the stem of her grapes, and reaching out her arms, threw them lovingly around Elizabeth's neck.
"Promise me, promise me!"