"Oh no," she said, "I think we understood each other pretty well, but then, don't you see, I didn't suppose it would be like this. I am expecting a trunk from New York every minute, and I thought when it came I should be dressed like other people. Now that I am not a sister, I did not want you to see me in these dreary clothes. Then I would go to my mother's house, and I thought you would call on me there, and things would go on more regularly; but you are so impetuous."
"My dearest love," said I, "it fills me with rapture to take you in my arms in the same dress you wore when I fell in love with you. Often and often as I looked at you through that grating have I thought that it would be to me the greatest joy on earth if I could take you in my arms and tell you that I loved you."
"You thought that!" exclaimed Sylvia; "it was very wrong of you."
"Right or wrong, I did it," said I, "and now I have her, my dear little nun, here in my arms."
She ceased to push and looked up at me with a merry smile.
"Do you remember," she said, "the morning the wasp came near stinging me?"
"Indeed I do," I said vehemently.
"Well, before that wasp came," she continued, "I used to be a good deal afraid of you. I thought you were very learned and dignified, but after I was so frightened, and you saw me without my bonnet, and all that, I felt we were very much more like friends, and that was the very beginning of my liking you."
"My darling," I exclaimed, "that wasp was the best friend we ever had. Do you want to see it?" and releasing her, I took from my pocket the pasteboard box in which I had placed our friend Vespa. As she looked at the insect, her face was lighted with joyous surprise.
"And that is the same wasp?" she said, "and you kept it?"