"Oh yes, you do now, I am sure you do. I don't believe you, if you don't tell me word for word what he said. Who began talking of me? And what did he say? And what did you say?"
"You had better tell me why you are so much interested in him," said Arla in the somewhat superior tone of the elder sister.
"That is none of your business. I will tell you that I am no longer a little girl, as you seem to think. And even though I am treated like a child here at home, there are others who—who—"
"Are you not a child?" said Arla. "You are not confirmed yet."
"Oh, is that it? That 'confirmation' is only a ceremony, which I submit to for mamma's sake. And don't imagine that it is confirmation which makes women of us; no indeed, it is something else."
"What then?" asked Arla, much surprised.
"It is—it is—love," burst out Gurli, and hid her head under the covers.
"Love! But Gurli, how you do talk! What do you know about that? You, a little schoolgirl!"
"Don't say 'little schoolgirl'—that makes me furious," cried Gurli, as she pushed the cover aside with both hands and jumped saying that I had such pretty eyes—and then he said that such a happy little sunbeam as I could light up his whole life, and that if he could not meet me, he would not know what to do—"
"Gurli!" cried Arla, and grasped her sister's arm violently. "Do you love him?"