Fanny’s blue eyes became suddenly alert.
“You mean the time Jim kissed you,” she murmured. “Oh, Ellen, I’ve always been so sorry for—”
“Well; you needn’t be,” interrupted Ellen; “I never cared a snap for Jim Dodge; so there!”
The youthful matron sighed gently: she felt that she understood poor dear Ellen perfectly, and in token thereof she patted poor dear Ellen’s hand.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she warbled.
Ellen burst into a gleeful laugh:
“You think you do; but you don’t,” she informed her friend, with a spice of malice. “Your case was entirely different from mine, my dear: You were perfectly crazy over Wesley Elliot; I was only in love with being in love.”
Fanny looked sweetly mystified and a trifle piqued withal.
“I wanted to have a romance—to be madly in love,” Ellen explained. “Oh, you know! Jim was merely a peg to hang it on.”
The wife of the minister smiled a lofty compassion.