"Aha!" said Rose, laughingly; "that's not the way lovers talk,—at least, not in books. I think you are safe, Phil. And yet" (with a soberer air) "I did think, Phil, one while, that you thought very, very often, and a great deal, of Adèle; and I was not sorry."
"Did you, Rose?" said Phil, eagerly; "did you truly? Then I'll tell you a secret, Rose,—mind, Rose, a great secret, never to be lisped,—not to mother even. I did love Adèle as far back as I can remember. You know the strange little French hat she used to wear? Well, I used to draw it on my slate at school, Rose; it was all I could draw that belonged to her. Many's the time, when, if a boy came near, I would dash in some little flourishes about it, and call it a basket or a coal-scoop; but all the while, for me, her little dark eyes were shining under it. But there was Reuben,—I told him I thought Suke Boody the prettiest girl in Ashfield, but it wasn't true,—and he beat me in reading and writing, and everything, I think, but fisticuffs."
"Did he?" said Rose, with the prettily arched brow which mostly accompanied only her mischievous sallies; and it seemed to Phil afterward that she would have resented the statement, if he had made it concerning any other young fellow in Ashfield.
"Yes, indeed," continued he. "I knew he must beat me out and out with Adèle. Do you remember, Rose, how you told me once that he had sent a gift of furs to her? Well, Rose, I had my own little gift hidden away for her for that same New-Year's day, and I burned it. Those furs kept me awake an awful time. And when I went away, Rose, I prayed that I might learn to forget her; but there was never a letter of yours that came with her name in it, (and most of them had it, you know,) but I saw her as plainly as ever, with her arm laced in yours, as I used to see you many a time from my window, strolling down the garden. And now that I have come back, Rose, it's the same confounded thing. By Jove, I feel as if I could pitch into Reuben, as I used to do at school. But then he's a good fellow, and a good friend of mine, I'm sure."
"I'm sure he is," said Rose. "But, Phil," continued she, meditatively, "it seems to me, if I were a man, and loved a woman as you love Adèle, I should find some way of letting her know it."
"Would you, Rosy? Do you think there's a ghost of a chance?"
"I don't know, Phil: Adèle is not one who talks of such things."
"Nor you, I think, Rose."
"Of course not, Phil." And after a little hesitation, "Of whom should I talk, pray?"
Now it happened that this private conversation took place upon the same day on which had transpired the interview we have already chronicled between the Doctor and Miss Johns. Reuben and Adèle were to pass the evening at the Elderkins'. Adèle was not of a temper to be greatly disturbed by the rumor at which the Doctor had hinted of a lost fortune. (We write, it must be remembered, of a time nearly thirty years gone by.) Indeed, as she tripped along beside Reuben, it seemed to him that she had never been in a more jocular and vivacious humor. A reason for this (and it is what, possibly, many of our readers may count a very unnatural one) lay in the letter which she had that day received from her father, in which Maverick, in alluding to a possible affaire du cœur in connection with Reuben, had counselled her, with great earnestness, to hold her affections in reserve, and, above all, to control most rigidly any fancy which she might entertain for the son of their friend the Doctor.