“Have you finished?” the old lady asked, as Carl, with pen suspended, looked up from his writing.
“Yes!”
“Then sign my name.”
“Shall I write ‘yours respectfully’ or ‘yours affectionately’?” Carl asked, with perfect gravity.
“Neither!” she replied curtly. “Sign my name without any compliment.”
“May I add a few lines for myself?” the young man asked, when he had signed the name as directed. “There is a whole page left.”
“Yes.” The answer was given very softly, and a smile of singular sweetness flitted across the old lady’s face as she looked at the writer. Miss Clinton was very fond of Carl, in a tyrannical, tormenting, selfish way, and liked nothing so much as to have him ask favors of her.
He wrote rapidly a few minutes, and was about closing the letter, when she stopped him. “Read me what you have written,” she said.
Carl blushed slightly, and hesitated. “It was not written to read to you,” he answered.
“No matter, it will be all the more interesting,” she persisted. “Read it! You read mine.”