"Ah! I suppose so. Well?"
"And then one young man went away, and only one was left—the handsomer of the two—and he fell in love with me!"
"Really and truly?"
"Why, of course he did. Is it so wonderful?" and the boarding-school girl looked steadily at her companion.
Mattie looked at her. She was a beautiful girl, and perhaps it was not so wonderful, after all. But then Mattie still looked at Harriet Wesden as a child—even as a child younger than she whom the world had aged very early—rendered "old-fashioned," as the phrase runs, in many things.
"Not wonderful, perhaps—but wasn't it wrong?" asked Mattie.
"I don't think so—I never thought of that—he was very fond of me, and used to send me letters by the servant, and I—I did get very fond of him. He was a gentleman's son, and oh! so handsome, Mattie, and so tall, and so clever!"
"About your age, I suppose?"
"No, four-and-twenty, or more, perhaps. I don't know."
"Well?—oh! dear, how did it end?" asked Mattie; "it's like the story-books in the shop—isn't it?"