I averted my head. "You should have been prepared for that when you took a child into your friendship."
"Ah! that rankles still, I see. Well, now, turn your face toward me, and look up, while I assure you, solemnly you know, and most sincerely, that I do not think you are childish in most things, that I do believe you are honest and true, and altogether, excepting a few pardonable caprices, as good a friend as one need desire. Doesn't that satisfy you? What could I say more flattering?"
"Oh! as to saying, you are unrivalled at that; it's the doing that you are deficient in. It's all very fine for you to call me your friend, and say how lonely you shall be without me, and all that style of thing; and then, in the next breath, tell me to get ready to go away to-morrow, and remark that you cannot see the least objection to my aunt's plan—and look and laugh just as usual. That doesn't seem much like meaning what you say, surely!"
"But what," he said, "would you have me do? If it made me perfectly miserable to part with you, it is still my duty to do it. Tell me any way of getting out of it."
"Let me stay at Rutledge," I exclaimed, turning toward him with pleading eyes; "just let me stay here. I hate New York, I hate society, I don't even know my aunt; and here I am so happy, and I have just got used to it all, and am beginning to feel at home, and it is cruel to take me to another strange place! I will be so good and useful; I will study and improve myself, and help Mrs. Arnold with the school-children and the poor people, and keep Mrs. Roberts' accounts, and read to you, and write your letters, and be just as good and obedient as possible; not in the least self-willed, not a bit unlady-like. Just try," I went on, coaxingly; "you will not know me, I shall be so amiable!"
"But," he said, with a strange mixture of fondness and irony in his tone, "what would Madame votre tante say to such an arrangement?"
"She would say, of course, that if I wanted to, I was very welcome to stay; she has daughters enough already, and not having seen me, she can't be expected to know whether she wants me or not."
"Very well; supposing for a moment, that your aunt had given her consent, and that there was no obstacle in the way of your remaining here, how many weeks do you suppose it would be before you would begin to think regretfully of the gay life you had given up, and the pleasures you had put out of your power, before you would begin to sigh for companions of your own age, and excitements greater than your life here could offer? Believe me, it would not be long before you would be thoroughly 'aweary' of the quiet routine of Rutledge, and thoroughly tired of your bargain."
I protested against this injustice, and exhausted every argument to prove my superiority to such fickleness, but Mr. Rutledge remained unconvinced.
"I do not say you are more fickle than are all other untamed young things of seventeen; it isn't your fault that you are not older and wiser; it is my misfortune. In the nature of things, you cannot stay forever ignorant and innocent, and indifferent to the world—