"And sleep them away."
"Oh! I shall not close an eye to-night. Good night, Mattie."
Miss Harriet Wesden, a young lady who had begun life early, was sleeping soundly three minutes after Mattie's departure from the room.
CHAPTER III.
OUR CHARACTERS.
In our last chapter we have implied that life began early for Harriet Wesden. Before her school-days were finished, and with that precocity for which school-girls of the present era are unhappily distinguished, she was thinking of her lover, and constituting herself the heroine of a little romance, all the more dangerous for being unreal and out of the common track. A tender-hearted girl, with a head not the most strong in the world, is easily impressed by the sentiment, real or assumed, of the first good-looking young fellow whom she may meet. In her own opinion she is not too young to receive admiration, and the consciousness of having impressed one of the opposite sex, arouses her vanity, changes the current of her thoughts, makes the world for awhile a very different place—bright, etherial and unreal. All this very dangerous ground to tread, but the more delightful for its pitfalls; all this a something that has occurred in a greater or less degree to most of us in our time, though we have the good sense to say nothing about it, or to laugh at the follies and the troubles we rashly sought in our nonage. Boys and girls begin their courtships early in these latter days—there is not a girl of sixteen who does not consider herself fit to love and be loved, however demure she may appear, or however much she may be kept back by detestable short frocks and frilled indescribables. And as for our boys, why, they are men of the world immediately they leave school—men of a world that is growing more rapid in its revolutions, and hardens its inhabitants wonderfully fast. It is a singular fact in the history of shop-keeping, that children's toys are becoming unfashionable. "Bless you, sir, children don't buy toys now, they're much too old for those amusements!" was the assertion of one of the trade to the writer of this work. And how many little misses and masters can most of us call to mind who are growing pale over their fancy work, their books, and their "collections," children who will do anything but play, and have souls above "Noah's Arks."
Therefore, in these precocious times, Harriet Wesden, seventeen next month, was no exceptional creature; moreover, she had been to a boarding-school, where she had met with many of her own age who were twice as womanly and worldly—big girls, who were always talking about "the chaps," as Mattie had inelegantly phrased it.
There is no occasion in this place to retrace the school-career of Harriet Wesden, to see how much she has kept back or extenuated; her story to Mattie was a truthful one, told with no drawbacks, but with a half-pride in her achievements which her girlish sorrows were not capable of concealing. There was something satisfactory in having loved and having been loved; and though the love had vanished away, still the reminiscence was not wholly painful, however much she might fancy so at that period.
Mattie had listened to her story, and offered all the consolation in her power; Mattie was a girl of hard, plain facts, and looked more soberly at the world than her contemporaries. She had a dark knowledge of the worst part of it, and her early years had aged her more than she was aware of herself—aged her thoughts rather than her heart, for she was always cheerful, and her spirits were never depressed; she went her way in life quietly and earnestly, grateful for the great change by which that life had been characterized; grateful to all who had helped to turn it in a different channel. At this period, Mattie was happy; there was nothing to trouble her; it was an important post to hold in that stationer's shop; everybody had confidence in her, and had given her kind words; she had learned to know right from wrong; they were interested in her moral progress, both the shopkeeper and the lodgers on the first floor; she was more than content with her position in society—she was thankful for it.