You have not search’d, as I have, through the world”—

“Nay, sister, I have not,” I said.

Then she—

“Quite right: and cannot yet know love, true love.

Kept close at school you were, and hard it was;

And harder still to-day that you must wait,

As I have done,—at your age too. But yet

Right love is ripe love. Life must be exposed

In sun and storm—to frost and bruising too:

The fruit grows mellow by and by alone.”