'Between us, they were scarcely necessary, Ellinor, and yet you have made me scores.'
'I—when?'
'Since we were children.'
'Oh—of course, when we played at being sweethearts, and all that sort of thing.'
'Played! It has been no child's play with me at least.'
'Such child's play is ended now—and I won't be scolded thus.'
She had never adopted this tone to him before, and young Wodrow was shocked, startled, and enraged; but still he dissembled, for love will tame and subdue the proudest heart, and his was full of great love for the girl who now stood before him, biting her nether lip, and shuffling the gravel with a little impatient foot.
'Ellinor,' said Robert, yet without attempting to take her hand, 'if you did not quite encourage my love, you permitted and adopted it—you accepted it since we were happy little children that toddled and played about together—and that love has gone on, growing with my growth and strengthening with my strength; and I never dreamed of, never thought of picturing the time when you might cast me off. And now I never doubted that when I graduated——'
'Oh, Robert,' interrupted the girl, nervously, 'you are too romantic; too much of a boy——'
'I am not a boy now, and I won't be called one! and as for a romance—certainly you have become very matter-of-fact, when I have heard you laugh at even a competence as not being sufficient.'