“Not even to Mr. Walter?”
“No.”
“Well, once, when the teacher wasn’t looking, Katy, he took a piece of chalk and wrote ‘Nettie’ on the palm of his hand, and held it up to me and then kissed it;” and Nettie hid her glowing face on Katy’s neck, whispering, “wasn’t it beautiful, Katy?”
“Yes,” replied Katy, trying to keep from laughing.
“Well,” said Nettie, “I felt most ashamed to tell mamma, I don’t know why, though. I believe I was afraid that she would call it ‘silly,’ or something; and I felt just as if I should cry if she did. But, Katy, she did not think it silly a bit. She said it was beautiful to be loved, and that it made everything on earth look brighter; and that she was glad little Neddy loved me, and that I might love him just as much as ever I liked—just the same as if he were a little girl. Wasn’t that nice?” asked Nettie. “I always mean to tell mamma everything; don’t you, Katy?”
“But you have not told Katy, yet, what you have hidden under your apron, there,” said Ruth.
“Sure enough,” said Nettie, producing a little picture. “Well, Neddy whispered to me one day in recess, that he had drawn a pretty picture on purpose for me, and that he was going to have a lottery; I don’t know what a lottery is; but he cut a great many slips of paper, some long and some short, and the one who got the longest was to have the picture. Then he put a little tiny mark on the end of the longest, so that I should know it; and then I got the picture, you know.”
“Why did he take all that trouble?” asked the practical Katy. “Why didn’t he give it to you right out, if he wanted to?”
“Because—because,” said Nettie, twirling her thumbs, and blushing with a little feminine shame at her boy-lover’s want of independence, “he said—he—was—afraid—the—boys—would—laugh at him if they found it out.”
“Well, then, I wouldn’t have taken it, if I had been you,” said the phlegmatic Katy.