'Not a word! Why, mother, she couldn't keep quiet!'
'I don't think she could, dear,' said my mother, with a smile. 'I mean not a word as to who she is. I think she gave your uncle a letter, for he has been writing to-day with one before him; but I am not sure.'
'I have been thinking about her all day, and I can't make her out. Anyhow, I hope she will stop with us. The house is quite different with her in it. Don't you think so? She is as light-hearted and as sparkling as a--a sunbeam.' I thought it a very happy simile. 'She couldn't be anything else.'
'My dear,' said my mother gravely, she was sobbing in her sleep last night as if her heart would break.' I looked so grieved at this that my mother quickly added, But she has been talking to your uncle to-day just as she did last night. She is like an April day; but then she is quite a child.'
'A child! Why, mother, she must be--how old should you think?'
'About fifteen, I should say, Chris.'
'So how can she be quite a child? And she doesn't talk like a child.'
'She does and she doesn't, my dear. I shouldn't wonder,' she said, with her sweet laugh, that because you are nearly eighteen, you think yourself quite a man.'
'I am growing, mother, am I not?' And I straightened myself stiffly up. Why, I am taller than you!'
'You will be as tall as your father was, my dear.'