“Come, Milly,—do hurry!” said Lilian to Mildred on the afternoon of the day when Lawrence was expected. “It seems as though you never would get all that hair braided. Thirty strands, as I live, and here I am wanting you to fix my curls, you do it so much better than I can.”
“Plenty of time,” returned Mildred; “Lawrence won’t be here this hour.”
“But I’m going to the depot,” returned Lilian; “and I saw Finn go out to harness just now. Oh, I am so anxious to see him! Why, Millie, you don’t know a thing about it, for you never loved anybody like Lawrence Thornton.”
“How do you know?” asked Mildred; and catching instantly at the possibility implied, Lilian exclaimed:
“Do you, as true as you live, love somebody?”
“Yes, a great many somebodies,” was the answer, while Lilian persisted:
“Yes, yes; but I mean some man,—somebody like Lawrence Thornton. Tell me!” and the little beauty began to pout quite becomingly at Mildred’s want of confidence in her.
“Yes, Lily,” said Mildred at last, “I do love somebody quite as well as you love Lawrence Thornton, but it is useless to ask his name, as I shall not tell.”
Lilian saw she was in earnest, and she forebore to question her, though she did so wish she knew; and dipping her brush in the marble basin, and letting the water drip all over the light carpet, she stood puzzling her weak brain to think “who it was Mildred Howell loved.”