“Devoted! well, I should rather think he was,” said Lillie. “I believe he would cut off his right hand for me, any day. But I never gave him any encouragement. I’ve always told him I could be to him only as a sister, you know.”
“You ought not to write to him,” said Belle.
“What can I do? He is perfectly desperate if I don’t, and still persists that he means to marry me some day, spite of my screams.”
“Well, he’ll have to stop making love to you after you’re married.”
“Oh, pshaw! I don’t believe that old-fashioned talk. Lovers make a variety in life. I don’t see why a married woman is to give up all the fun of having admirers. Of course, one isn’t going to do any thing wrong, you know; but one doesn’t want to settle down into Darby and Joan at once. Why, some of the young married women, the most stunning belles at Newport last year, got a great deal more attention after they were married than they did before. You see the fellows like it, because they are so sure not to be drawn in.”
“I think it’s too bad on us girls, though,” said Belle. “You ought to leave us our turn.”
“Oh! I’ll turn over any of them to you, Belle,” said Lillie. “There’s Harry, to begin with. What do you say to him?”
“Thank you, I don’t think I shall take up with second-hand articles,” said Belle, with some spirit.
But here the entrance of the chamber-maid, with a fresh dress from the dressmaker’s, resolved the conversation into a discussion so very minute and technical that it cannot be recorded in our pages.