“Annie? Don’t you remember Annie! Why, she was Your Little Sweetheart. You used to play together day in and day out. It was so cute to see you!”
But no. You may catch here a bit of blue ribbon, there an echo of a laugh, yet, try as you will, you may not recall her. Evidently when Your Little Sweetheart Annie was put away along with dresses and curls, she was put away so far that she was lost forever.
What space of months, or of years, elapses, you cannot tell. Nevertheless, suddenly you do witness yourself, still of age most immature, (you recollect that somewhere in this period you were miserably spelled down on “fish”), laying votive offerings upon the desk of your First Love, a girl with brown eyes and rounded, rosy cheeks.
These offerings are in the shape of bright pearl buttons and carnelian pebbles. The transfer requires much breathless daring. Down the aisle of the school-room you march, your gift tightly clutched in your hand, which swings carelessly by your side. Past her seat you scuttle, and, without a single glance, you leave the treasure upon the oaken top, beneath her eyes. Away you hurry, affrighted, ashamed, apprehensive, but hopeful. Presently, blushing, from your seat you steal a look across at her. She smiles roguishly. The offering is gone. It is accepted; for she holds it up that you may see. And you grin back, as red as a beet, while your heart, exultant, goes thumpity, thumpity, thumpity.
In company with another boy, who must have been a rival, you descry yourself hanging about her gate, turning somersaults, wrestling, and performing all kinds of monkey-shines, in the brazen fancy that she may be peeking out of a window and admiring you. She is framed, for an instant, by the pane. You and he scamper up and deposit in plain view—you upon the right gate-post, he upon the left—a handful apiece of hazelnuts. Then the pair of you withdraw to a discreet distance and wait. Out she trips, and gathers in your handful; but his she disdainfully sweeps off upon the ground.
He whooped in contempt and swaggered in derision; and you—you—what was it you did? Alas! the picture is cut here abruptly, as by a knife; the First Love vanishes, and the Second Love succeeds.
She is the minister’s daughter, a gentle, winsome little lass, not at all like the saucebox of the brown eyes and the rich cheeks. In the case of this Second Love there seems to have been no studied wooing, no sheepish bribery by pearl buttons and carnelians and nuts. You fall in with each other as a matter of course. In playing drop-the-handkerchief you nearly always favor her, and she you; and when either favors some one else the understanding between you is perfect that this is done merely for the sake of appearances.
Your mutual affection is of the telepathic order. Others in the party may romp and squeal and shout in the moonlight, but you and she sit together on the wheelbarrow, and look on in tolerant, eloquent silence.
In games you have occasionally kissed just the tip of her ear, and that was sufficient. Teasing companions may cry: “Aw, kiss her! Fraidie! fraidie! That ain’t kissin’!” But you know she knows, and smacks—those boisterous smacks current in the realm—are superfluous.