"Oh, don't think that! I have been so happy here these two weeks!
That is the very reason I ought to go."
"How is that? I don't see the argument."
"Because this is not my home, or the way I am to live, or these the people I am to live with; and the sooner I am away, the better."
She did not see all the meaning of her words, poor child! but her companion did, and smiled merrily to himself as he said,—
"You mean, we do not come up to your standard, and you cannot waste more time upon us; don't you?"
Dora turned and looked at him, her suspicions roused by a mocking ring beneath the affected humility of his tone; and, looking, she caught the covert smile not yet faded from his eyes.
"It is not kind, Mr. Burroughs, to laugh at me, or to try to confuse me in this way," said she steadily. "No doubt, you know what I mean; and why do you wish to force me into saying, that the more I see of the life and thoughts and manners of such people as Mrs. Legrange and you, and even my own little Sunshine, now so far away from me, the less fit I feel to associate with them? And, just because it is so pleasant to me, I feel that I ought to go back at once to the home and the duties and the people where I belong. I am but a poor country-girl, sir, hardly taught in any thing except the love of God, and the wish to do something before I die to make my fellow-creatures a little happier or more comfortable than I find them. Let me go to my work, and out of it I will make my life."
Perhaps never had the self-contained heart of the young girl so framed itself in words; certainly never had Mr. Burroughs so fully read it: and when she finished, and, neither turning from him nor toward him, steadfastly set her eyes forward, as one who sees mapped out before him the path he is to tread through all the coming years, he took her hand in his with a sudden impulse of tenderness,—
"Dora, you will love some one yet; and love will make you happy."
"I have loved two people, and lost them both. I do not mean to love any one else," said Dora, quietly withdrawing her hand.