"Nothing," she replied, "only I'm lonesome and homesick, and I wish I'd gone to New York with Mr. Bellenger."
"Why didn't you then?" was Walter's cool reply, and Jessie answered, angrily:
"I would, if I had known what I do now."
"And pray what do you know now?" Walter asked, in the same cold, calm, tone, which so exasperated Jessie that she replied:
"I know you hate me, and I know you didn't write all that valedictory, and everything."
"Jessie," Walter said, sternly, "what do you mean about that valedictory. Come, sit by me and tell me at once."
In Walter's voice there was a tone which, as a child, Jessie had been wont to obey, and now at his command she stole timidly to his side upon the rustic bench, and told him all her suspicions, and the source from which they originated.
There was a sudden flash of anger in Walter's eye at his cousin's meanness, and then, with a merry laugh, he said:
"And it sounded familiar to you, too, did it? Some parts of it might, I'll admit, for you had heard them before. Do you remember being at any examination in Wilbraham, when I took the prize in composition, or rather declamation? It was said then that my essay was far beyond my years, and I am inclined to think it was; for I have written nothing since which pleased me half so well. I was appointed valedictorian, as you know, and in preparing my oration I selected a few of those old ideas and embodied them in language to suit the occasion. I am hardly willing to call it plagiarism, stealing from myself, and I am sure you would never have recognized it either if Mr. Bellenger had not roused your suspicions. Is my explanation satisfactory?"
It was perfectly so, for Jessie now remembered where she had heard something like Walter's valedictory, and with her doubts removed she became much like herself again, though she would not admit that William's insinuations were mere fabrications of his own. He never heard it before, she knew, but some of Walter's old Wilbraham associates might have been present and said in his hearing that it seemed familiar, and then it would be quite natural for him to think so too.