"Why, Anna is my friend, you know," cried Julia, with eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "I love her, because she has feelings congenial with my own; she has so much wit, is so amusing, so frank, so like a girl of talents—so like—like every thing I admire myself."
"It is a pity that one so highly gifted cannot furnish herself with frocks," said the aunt, with a little more than her ordinary dryness of manner, "and suffer you to work for those who want them more."
"You forget it is in order to remember me," said Julia, in a manner that spoke her own ideas of the value of the gift.
"One would think such a friendship would not require any thing to remind one of its existence," returned the aunt.
"Why! it is not that she will forget me without it, but that she may have something by her to remind her of me——-" said Julia rapidly, but pausing as the contradiction struck even herself.
"I understand you perfectly, my child," interrupted the aunt, "merely as an unnecessary security, you mean."
"To make assurance doubly sure," cried Charles
Weston with a laugh.
"Oh! you laugh, Mr. Weston," said Julia with a little anger; "but I have often said, you were incapable of friendship."
"Try me!" exclaimed the youth fervently. "Do not condemn me without a trial."
"How can I?" said Julia, laughing in her turn. "You are not a girl."