“I wonder if I’ll ever wear a bracelet like that?”
“Would you like to?” the doctor asked, glancing at the small white wrist, around which the dark calico sleeve was closely buttoned, and thinking how much prettier and modest-looking it was than Agnes’ half bare arms, where the ornaments were flashing.
“Y-e-s,” came hesitatingly from Maddy, who had a strong passion for jewelry. “I guess I would, though grandpa classes all such things with the pomps and vanities which I must renounce when I get to be good.”
“And when will that be?” the doctor asked.
Again Maddy sighed, as she replied, “I cannot tell. I thought so much about it while I was sick, that is, when I could think; but now I’m better, it goes away from me some. I know it is wrong, but I cannot help it. I’ve seen only a bit of pomp and vanity, but I must say that I like what I have seen, and I wish to see more. It’s very wicked, I know,” she kept on, as she met the queer expression of the doctor’s face; “and I know you think me so bad. You are good—a Christian, I suppose.”
There was a strange light in the doctor’s eye as he answered, half sadly, “No, Maddy, I am not what you call a Christian. I have not renounced the pomps and vanities yet.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” and Maddy’s eyes expressed all the sorrow she professed to feel. “You ought to be, now you are so old.”
The doctor colored crimson, and stopping his horse under the dim shadow of a maple in a little hollow, he said:
“I’m not so very old, Maddy; only twelve years older than yourself; and Agnes’s husband was more than twenty-five years her senior.”
The doctor did not know why he dragged that last in, when it had nothing whatever to do with their conversation; but as the most trivial thing often leads to great results, so from the pang caused by Maddy’s thinking him so old, was born the first real consciousness he had ever had that the little girl beside him was very dear, and that the twelve years’ difference between them might prove a most impassable gulf. With this feeling, it was exceedingly painful for him to hear Maddy’s sudden exclamation: