"I'm afraid she did."
"Oh!"
She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.
"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"
"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you. I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."
And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is how we with our belated loves strike the young—we of the Valley of Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.
Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her next words broke from her with a vivid little jump.
"Oh, how I hate her now!"
"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"
"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! She ought to have been proud—instead of playing cards all the evening!"