"Of course I am," she said, moving a little away from me; "the idea! Why, Jack, it is absurd! Jack—" and instantly she stopped. Her voice dropped with a sad little wilt, and she laid her head upon my shoulder.
I knew that she was brave and never cried, or else I would have believed she was in tears.
"Dear Little Sister," I said consolingly, "why, what is it? What has happened since I left? This has been Aunt Lucretia's dream all her life, and mine too," I said, tenderly kissing her cheek.
Eloise sighed; then after a while she answered. "Of course, Jack, she has said that always, ever since we were children, and being children, why we couldn't say anything, for our very home and living depended on it. But Jack, I see it all now. I'm ashamed of it—though I couldn't help it—this—this awful buy-and-sell way, this bartering me because I am poor and an orphan, this closing the chance of the great dream of my life for me—that one dream which every woman loves more than life, Jack. It's—why, I've treated you so badly. I wonder that you care for me at all. But—oh, Jack, I had such ideas of love, and now to be mated off like her cattle!"
"I know it," I said, "only you were never as mean as you say. Young as we were I felt it, too, and that is why I didn't blame you. But it never made any difference with me, Eloise—I have loved you always, and I'm as proud of you now as anyone can be."
"Oh, you dear boy," said she. She laid her head upon my shoulder, then reached up and kissed me on the cheek. She was silent and I was never so happy, with her head lying there, and the perfume of her hair in my face.
At last she laughed. "Jack, you neglected me shamefully while you were away, studying."
"I wrote you a love letter every week!" I exclaimed.
"But people in love write to each other every day," she said. "You don't really love me, Jack!"
"Eloise, I couldn't write every day, but I thought of you the last thing every night before I went to sleep, and I slept with your picture under my pillow, and I used to play that we were married, and that my dressing gown in the chair was you."