"Nothing like making assurance doubly sure!" answered the other. "Pity he did not return to town this winter. Love's labor is lost."
"Why, Ida! what a flirt you are!" cried Anna. "When everybody says you are engaged to Mr. Dana!"
"Everybody is wrong, then," said Ida, calmly.
"Everybody is right!" contradicted Josephine. "She reads in her Bible, that she 'must love all men;' and her being in mourning for one beau, and dying with love for another, are no impediments to her engagement with a third. This is Platonism with a vengeance."
"Fie! Josephine!" said Anna, perceiving by Ida's face, that the pleasantry, as she still thought it, was going too far. "You know, as well as I do, that Mr. Holmes was only a friend. Mrs. Dana is in black for him too—it is as reasonable to say that she was in love with him."
"She may have been, for anything I know to the contrary;" retorted Josephine, growing more and more insolent. "I don't pretend to understand the morals of 'the clique.'"
"I am going up stairs, Anna," said Ida, "and will send you the pearls. If they please you, you are welcome to them, whenever you wish them."
Anna pulled her down. "Don't go! I want to talk with you. You must not regard Josephine's nonsense—it is only a foolish jest."
"One, which must not be repeated!" said Ida. "I may not notice an insult to myself, but if my friends are slandered, I must defend them."
"Defend them, as long and loud as you choose;" replied Josephine, retaining her disagreeable smile and tone. "Recriminate too, if you like. It is but politic in you to fight for your patrons. Aha! that flash of the eye was Christian-like! Did you never observe, Anna, that when the 'brethren' are wrought up to the belligerent point, they are the fiercest of combatants?"