"Oh, Louis!" I cried, "I don't know, I am so ignorant—why was I born so? don't treat me unkindly, you are dear to me, dear, but I can't talk."
"Never, never say so again."
He seemed taller as he paused in his walk, and released the firm hold he had kept of my arm, said slowly:
"God waits for man, and angels wait, and I will wait, and you will tell me sometime—say no word to my little mother"—and he kissed my forehead, a tear-drop falling on me from his eyes, and we walked silently and slowly home.
I sought my room, and crying bitterly, said to myself, "Emily Minot must you always do the very thing you desire not to do?"
When my eye met Louis' at the table next morning, I felt as if I had committed an unpardonable sin. My whole being had trembled with the deep respect and admiration I had felt for him since the moment we met, and I certainly had given him cause to understand me to be incapable of responding to his innermost thought. I felt he would treat me differently, but a second look convinced me that such was not the fact. His noble nature could not illtreat any one, and I only saw a look of positive endurance, "I am waiting," photographed on his features, and made manifest in all his manner toward me, and a determined effort to put me at ease resulted at last in forcing me to appear as before, while all the time a sharp pain gnawed at my heart, and, unlike most girls, I was not easy until I told my mother of it all.
She stroked my dark hair and said:
"You and he have only seen nineteen short years. Wisdom is the ripened fruit of years; you cannot judge of your future from to-day."
That comforted me, and I felt better in my mind. I planned something to say to Louis, but every opportunity was lost, and the last week of his stay had already begun. The plans of his little mother had been confided to me, and work had commenced.
There was to be an addition of four large rooms on the west side of our house, and they were planned in accordance with Clara's ideas. She did not call them her's, and started with the understanding that the improvements were just a little present for her dear cousins. Best of all, we were to have a bow window in one of the rooms, and this was something so new, so different, it seemed a greater thing to me than the architecture of the ancient cathedrals. A bow window, and the panes of glass double, yes, treble the size of the old ones!