“You had stopped being good?”
“Yes, that only lasted a little bit of a time.”
“Miss Mae, I’m sure you were never ugly, but naughty and silly, I dare say. Kept a diary now, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and went to sleep with Eliza Cooke’s poems under my pillow every night, and my finger holding the book open at some such thrilling verse as this:
‘Say on that I’m over romantic
In loving the wild and the free,
But the waves of the dashing Atlantic,
The Alps and the eagle for me.’”
“Did you wear your hair plaited when you were ten years old?” enquired Norman, intensely busy with another drawing.
“O no; I didn’t do anything when I was ten years old but get mad and make up with my two dearest friends.”
“One of whom was your dearest friend one-half of the time and the other the rest of it, I suppose.”
“Don’t be satirical, sir. I had a lover when I was eleven; I used to skate with him and write him little notes, folded very queerly.”
“Why do you draw twelve and thirteen with their heads down?” asked Mae, after a moment.