"Well, Minny, if there's misery it won't be my fault, I'm sure. You know very well that papa wouldn't have me notice Bernard, much more than I would Black Voltaire. If he would, don't you suppose I would be very glad to show him all my letters, and to tell him how we love each other, and all that? But now, if I did, he'd rave, and go into a furious passion, shut me up, maybe, and send Bernard to Europe, or some other horrid place. Oh, I should be frightened to death."
"That's the very thing, Miss; he looks so high for you."
"Bernard is just as high as papa was when he first came here,—but there's another thing; don't you know I'm not allowed to see any one an instant alone, that wears pantaloons? The very instant that a gentleman calls, and says he'd like to see Miss Della, doesn't papa or mamma, or that provoking old governess, march straight into the parlor, and receive them before me? And isn't it very provoking?
Why, even little Charley Devans, a boy three years younger than I, called to tell me a little innocent secret his sister had sent by him, and wasn't there mamma, as straight as a marshal, in one chair, and my governess, stiff as my new parasol-top, in the other, and he couldn't say a word? But you know he met me in the street that day you walked out with me, and told me all about it."
"Yes, Miss, but this is all for your good."
"No, Minny, it is all for my hurt. Though, maybe, they don't know it. Now, don't you see that if young Mr. Devans could have seen me alone but one little minute that day, he wouldn't have planned a clandestine meeting, and so make me do a very naughty thing, by walking alone with him, after having been charged never to walk alone with any gentleman?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Well, Minny, I don't often reflect, you know—but the other day, after I had received a note from Bernard, I sat down and reflected a long time. And it was on this subject. And I came to the conclusion, that all this watching—just raise that bandeau a trifle higher—and spying, for it is nothing else, on the part of mammas and governesses, has a very bad tendency, indeed. Don't you see that it throws a kind of mystery about the men, and, right away, young girls—and it's natural for young girls to be curious—want to find out what there is so very awful about them, and go to work to do it?"
Minny looked up surprised; she had never heard her mistress talk so fast and so long before.