"Besides," Frank went on, disdainful of all poetry, "if you really cared like you ought to, you wouldn't be out so late the night before; you'd be having your beauty sleep right now, just to be lovely when he came—or, at least, to be even lovelier," he amended; for Frank was a Southern gentleman.
"I never had it bad enough to go to bed over it," I admitted; "but he'll be here to-morrow—he'll be here to-morrow," I chanted, as ecstatically as I could. Yet I felt at the time that the words didn't ring much; it was a little like trying to peal a chime on a row of pillows. Then, before I knew it, I yawned, yawned brazenly into the face of the brass knocker on the door.
"Exactly!" said Frank, his hand moving to his hat, "that's just about the size of it—Miss Helen, you're a little idiot," and his honest eyes shone bright with their candour of affection.
"Sir!" said I, employing a splendid intonation. And I gave a little stamp on the stone step beneath me—all true Southern girls love to stamp. "Sir!" I repeated, "you forget yourself."
"But I don't forget you," Frank retorted swiftly, his face quivering a little; "though I wish I could, a little more. And I know you don't care anything about him, the way he thinks you do—or the way he wants you to. And God help him—and you too—if something doesn't happen; you have either gone too far, or not far enough, Miss Helen," he declared boldly, looking straight into my eyes in the moonlight. And I couldn't help gazing back, for his look and his words both had a kind of fascination for me; I reckon I knew they both were true. So I didn't get angry—only a lot of things, all connected with the past, rushed like a flood before me. But I will tell them all in another chapter. I had no mind to discuss them with Frank just then.
So I simply said "Good-night, I'm going in." And Frank said good-night with great respect and turned to go away. I peeped through the crack just before I closed the door, and I could see that his eyes were on the pavement and his step was slow. Yet I cared nothing for that, except as it boded what might be of interest to myself.
II
JUST EIGHTEEN
As I sit and look back on it all now, I feel almost sure that a girl's real life begins at somewhere about eighteen years of age. A boy is different; his life begins at a great many different times. To start with, he has a distinct promotion at four or five—he casts off skirts forever, with contempt, and that itself is a promotion. Then he takes on the uniform of manhood, glorying in the frank two-leggedness of his kind; and in quite a real sense this marks the beginning of his manhood. Indeed, a boy has mile-posts all along the way. Top boots come next, and the first pair, clothing his knees with their red leather crown, give life a rosy splendour. This pales, of course, as does all other glory—but the day reappears in divers forms. His curls are one day amputated, falling fast, the hour of their doom still bright with an undaunted sheen—and the young Samson shakes himself gleefully in this new token of manly strength. Then comes his first game of ball, or his first venture with tools; or he is one day permitted to hold a slumbering butcher-horse while its master steps within; in return, he is allowed to drive a block or two—trifling enough, as some one smiles and says, but every boy remembers it and it marks a new stage of power. About this time he learns to swim; all the past is forgotten, the future all despised, till he becomes amphibious. Then comes his first watch—time is annihilated in the tumult of that hour; then a gun of his own—its first report is heard around the world. And so it goes on, ever onward, from one lock to another in life's long waterway. By and by the stream widens far; he must choose his profession—then his partner—then someone, and the romance seems never at an end.
But a girl's life has no such variety; skirts are her abiding portion, from swaddling clothes to shroud. And her curls, undisturbed, thicken with the years. No top boots for her, nor game of ball, nor wizardry of tools; for her nothing but the long drab way of girlhood, beginning with the nursery and ending with the same.