"No, no, with Miriam Rooth."
She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of the sweetest things he had ever seen—it conveyed, at the expense of her own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance—"He isn't, Peter," she brought out. "Julia thinks it trifling—all that sort of thing," she added "She wants him to go in for different honours."
"Julia's the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him," Peter explained. "And when you love a person—!" He continued to make it out, leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered eyes, sat waiting—it so interested her—to learn what you did when you loved a person. "I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great ability, besides being such a good fellow."
"It's for his happiness, Peter—that's the way she reasons," Biddy set forth. "She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it, and I see the way she feels."
"You try to, Biddy, because you're such a dear good-natured girl, but I don't believe you do in the least," he took the liberty of replying. "It's too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you call it, must be curious."
"Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She won't risk not coming out at the top."
"At the top of what?"
"Oh of everything." Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.
"Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love."
"I don't know," said the girl.