"Well, dear? I——"
"You showed that you were not entirely satisfied with every thing as it was, and that you had a little self-will leading you to force things to be as you chose, by trying to make that poor little flower outrun the course of nature and bloom before it was quite ready."
"I think you are right, Elsie," said Margaret, nodding her head in that slight and repeated manner indicative of answering the mind within quite as much as any observation from without. "I am not satisfied with every thing in the world, Elsie. I am not cruel, I hope and believe; but I am sharper, harder, more requiring than you, and consequently not formed for half so much true happiness. I do feel like forcing things to be what I require, sometimes, and then I suppose I grow unamiable."
"You are never any thing else than a dear good girl, with a wiser head than my rattle-pate, and my own sweet sister that is to be!" and the arm of the speaker went still more closely around the slight waist it encircled. A blush as delicately roseate as the first flushings of dawn crept over the more classic face that bent above her own, the lips above came down to meet those pouting below, and the two young girls were kissing and embracing as if they had been two lovers of opposite sexes but very much of one opinion as to the best office of the lips. Any delicately-nerved old bachelor who should have happened to pass in front of the house at that moment and catch a glimpse of the scene just then enacted on the piazza, would certainly have fainted away on the spot, at the idea of such a waste of the most delicious of "raw material."
"You may have the rose for your lesson—you see I have not spoiled it, after all," said Margaret, when the kiss had been given and the rosy flush died away from her own cheek.
"To give to Carlton?" asked Elsie, as she held out her hand for it.
"No, Carlton must come after his own roses!" was the reply, with the least dash of pride in the curling of the upper lip.
"And pluck them himself?" asked saucy Elsie.
"Certainly!"
"No matter where he finds them growing—on tree, or on cheek, or on lips!" continued the young girl, with a light laugh.