Before I could get hold of the handle of the pail, he had seized it and was swinging it along with as much ease as if he had a bunch of roses in his hand. We ascended the little hill together, he talking all the time, in a spirited, joyous manner, laughing at his awkwardness as he stumbled against a rolling stone, wishing he was a school-boy again in the old academy, whose golden vane was once an object of such awe and admonition in his eyes. "By the way, Gabriella," he asked, changing from subject to subject with marvellous rapidity, "do you ever write poetry now?" "I have given that up, as one of the follies of my childhood, one of the dreams of my youth." "Really, you must be a very venerable person,--you talk of the youthful follies you have discarded, the dreams from which you have awakened, as if you were a real centenarian. I wonder if there are not some incipient wrinkles on your face." He looked at me earnestly, saucily; and I involuntarily put up my hands, as if to hide the traces of care his imagination was drawing. "I really do feel old sometimes," said I, smiling at the mock scrutiny of his gaze, "and it is well I do. You know I am going to be a teacher, and youth will be my greatest objection." "No, no, I do not want you to be a teacher. You were not born for one. You will not be happy as one,--you are too impulsive, too sensitive, too poetic in your temperament. You are the last person in the world who ought to think of such a vocation." "Would you advise me, then, to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in preference?" "I would advise you to continue your studies, to read, write poetry, ramble about the woods and commune with nature, as you so love to do, and not think of assuming the duties of a woman, while you are yet nothing but a child. Oh! it is the most melancholy thing in the world to me, to see a person trying to get beyond their years. You must not do it, Gabriella. I wish I could make you stop _thinking_ for one year. I do not like to see a cheek as young as yours pale with overmuch thought. Do you know you are getting very like your mother?" "My mother!" I exclaimed, with a glow of pleasure at the fancied resemblance, "why, she is the most beautiful person I have yet seen,--there is, there can be no likeness." "But there is, though. You speak as if you thought yourself quite ugly. I wonder if you do. Ugly and old. Strange self-estimation for a pretty girl of fifteen!" "I suppose you learn to flatter in college," said I, "but I do not care about being flattered, I assure you." "You are very much mistaken if you think I am trying to flatter you. I may do so a year or two hence if I chance to meet you in company, but here, in this rural solitude, with the very element of truth in my hand, I could not deceive, if I were the most accomplished courtier in the world."