“Nay, sister, I have not,” I said. Then she— “Quite right: and cannot yet know love, true love. Kept close at school you were, and hard it was; And harder still to-day that you must wait, As I have done,—at your age too. But yet Right love is ripe love. Life must be exposed In sun and storm—to frost and bruising too: The fruit grows mellow by and by alone.” “Why, dear,” said I, “I think that I can love! You know what Haydn sings,—that maids, like flowers, Are sweetest, pluck’d when in the bud?” “There now, You always will be quoting him!” she cried,— “Because, forsooth, a man, your first man-friend! Yet, not compared by you with other men, How know you him, what sort of man he is?— Girls unsophisticated are like bees: They buzz for all, and yet sip all their sweets From the first flowery lips that open to them.” XX. “Nay,” answer’d I, “I like him not for that,— Because a man!” “What?—not for that?” she said: “Aha, have shrewder plans?—I know, I know It would be well if you, or I, could feel That all were settled for our wedded life; So many ifs and ifs, it vexes one; It would be better, were we done with them. But we, poor girls, too trusting natures have. Weak parasites at best, each tall stout man Seems just the thing that we should cling about. But, dear, I think that half these trunks give way:— The wonder is we dare to cling at all!” “But Haydn,” said I, “Haydn”— “As for him,” She sigh’d, “may be he is not trustless all; Yet if he be, or be not, how know you Who know not human nature, nor have learn’d The way to work it, and bring out its worth? A friend grows grain and chaff. Sift out the first And cultivate it well, some gain may come— Some profit from your friendship.” “But,” said I, “If you should change yourself who change your friend, Or change but his relations to yourself, Or, some way, make a new, strange man of him?”— “Then would I make,” she said, “what pleases me; And with what pleases me preserve my love.” XXI. “And I,” replied I, “not for future gain, For what he may become, would prize my friend; I prize the thing he is; nor wish him changed. I would not dare disturb for aught besides The poise of traits composing sympathy, Which, as they are, so balance my desires. Ah, did I chiefly look for gain to come, For him or me, where were my present joy?— Nay, nay, that love I, which I find possess’d.” “Pray, how much can you find possess’d?” she ask’d.