"Here, take my handkerchief."
"Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else."
"You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for Sally you didn't know a time would come when—"
"Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young woman now. And this is all different to that."
"No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and dressed you up"—a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye—"why, by that time, you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is full of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains fixed."
"Then, perhaps"—she flushed up, her eyes sparkled—"perhaps"—she grew dumb and sad again.
"Perhaps what?"
He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone possessed the silence.
"Perhaps you'll change, too." She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at him—her eyes were full of soft light.
This time he was dumb.