“Say, Lu, how does it feel to be in love? Is it anything like what novels tell about?”
“Don’t ask me,” exclaimed Lucia, “or I shall have a fit of crying right away.”
“Well, I’ll let you off—for a little while, if you’ll tell me how it feels to have your hand kissed.”
“It feels,” said Lucia, meditatively, “as if something rather heavy was pressing upon your glove.”
“Ah, you’re real mean!” protested the younger girl. “But what will papa and mamma say? And how are you going to get rid of Mr. Marge? I give you warning that you needn’t turn him over to me when I come out. I detest him.”
“I don’t want to get rid of him,” said Lucia, becoming suddenly very sober. “Of course I couldn’t marry Phil if he were to ask me,—not if he’s going to stay poor and live out of the world.”
“But you’re not going to be perfectly awful, and marry one man while you love another?”
“I’m not going to marry anybody until I’m asked,” exclaimed Lucia, springing from the bed, wringing her hands, and pacing the floor; “and nobody has asked me yet; I don’t know that anybody ever will. And I’m perfectly miserable; if you say another word to me about it I shall go into hysterics. Nobody ever heard anything but good of Phil Hayn, either here or anywhere else, and if he loves me I’m proud of it, and I’m going to love him back all I like, even if I have to break my heart afterward. He shan’t know how I feel, you may rest assured of that. But oh, Margie, it’s just too dreadful. Mamma has picked out Mr. Marge for me,—who could love such a stick?—and she’ll be perfectly crazy if I marry any one else, unless perhaps it’s some one with a great deal more money. I wonder if ever a poor girl was in such a perfectly horrible position?”
Margie did not know, so both girls sought consolation in the ever-healing fount of maidenhood,—a good long cry.