“You can not expect me to feel very kindly towards you. Why may I not lose all but the memory of you?”
“You may. I am willing,” she answered wearily. “Oh, I wanted to be satisfied with you.”
He had left the room with his last words, not waiting for reply.
And she could only cry out, with a dry, hard sob, “Oh, Ralph, Ralph, I wanted to be satisfied with you!”
XIX.—THE OLD STORY.
One afternoon in the reading-room she found two notices of her book; one was in Hearth and Home, the other in The Lutheran Observer; the former ran in this style:
“‘Under the Wings’ by Theresa Louise Wadsworth is the most lifelike representation of a genuine live boy that we have seen for many a day. We are almost tempted to think that the author was once a boy herself she is so heartily in sympathy with a boy’s thoughts and feelings. It is a book that every boy ought to read, and we are confident that no boy can read it without being bettered by it.”
The other she was more pleased with:
“Rob is a genuine boy, with all manner of faults and pranks; but a tender, truthful heart, and a determination for the right that brings him through safely. But specially is he delightful in juxtaposition with Nell, a little girl who says the quaintest things in the most laughable, most lovable manner. Altogether it is a thoroughly enjoyable book, sweet and saintly, too; though not saintly after the cut and dried style of youthful piety.”
She turned the papers with a startled face as if the lady in the black cloak near her had guessed what she had looked for and had found; as if the blonde mustache hidden behind Emerson surmised that she had written a book and wondered why she had not attempted something deeper; as if Mr. Lewis Gesner reading a newspaper with his forehead puckered into a frown knew that she was slightly a blue-stocking, and decided that she might better be learning how to be a good wife for somebody.