"For what, Fanny?" I asked.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. I should be a traitor, and that is cowardly."
"No, Fanny, not when we are friends. If you tell me, would you do any harm?"
"No," she answered doubtfully.
"Then treachery is meant to do harm, and if you don't mean harm it isn't treachery," I replied coaxingly, but with bad logic as I have been told since.
"Well, then, perhaps I'll say something. Now suppose you liked me very much——"
"So I do, Fanny, I swear!"
"No you don't, stupid! How can you? I'm not twins—that is, I and somebody else aren't the same—so don't interrupt. Suppose you liked me very much, and I liked you very much——"
"It would be very nice, I dare say," I said, in a doubtful way that was neither diplomatic nor complimentary.
"And suppose you went off, and suppose I didn't speak to my sister for hours, and kept on being a nasty thing by tossing and tumbling about all night, so that she, poor girl, couldn't go to sleep; and then suppose when she did go off nicely, she woke up to find me—what do you think—crying, what would it mean?"