"I wish you hadn't, Miss Harriet. It's not the likes of me that is going to think about it; and if you had left it till you were really a woman--I don't know much about the matter yet--but I'm thinking it would be all the better for you, too, my dear." "It came all of a rush like--I wasn't thinking of it. There were two young men at first, who used to watch our school, and laugh at the biggest of us, and kiss their hands--just as young men _will_ do, Mattie." "Like their impudence, I think." Mattie's matter-of-fact views were coming uppermost again. She had seen much of the world in her youth, experienced much hardship, worked hard for a living, and there was no romance in her disposition--only affection, which had developed of late years, thanks to her new training. "But there's always a little fun amongst the big girls, Mattie." "What is the governess about?" "She's looking out--but, bless you, she may look!" "Ah! I suppose so. Well?" "And then one young man went away, and only one was left--the handsomer of the two--and he fell in love _with me_!" "Really and truly?" "Why, of course he did. Is it so wonderful?" and the boarding-school girl looked steadily at her companion. Mattie looked at her. She _was_ a beautiful girl, and perhaps it was not so wonderful, after all. But then Mattie still looked at Harriet Wesden as a child--even as a child younger than she whom the world had aged very early--rendered "old-fashioned," as the phrase runs, in many things. "Not wonderful, perhaps--but wasn't it wrong?" asked Mattie. "I don't think so--I never thought of that--he was very fond of me, and used to send me letters by the servant, and I--I did get very fond of him. He was a gentleman's son, and oh! _so_ handsome, Mattie, and _so_ tall, and _so_ clever!" "About your age, I suppose?" "No, four-and-twenty, or more, perhaps. I don't know." "Well?--oh! dear, how _did_ it end?" asked Mattie; "it's like the story-books in the shop--isn't it?" "Wait awhile, dear. The misery of the human heart is to be unfolded now. He's a gentleman's son, and there's an estate or something in West India or East India, or in some dreadful hot place over the water somewhere, where the natives hook themselves in the small of their backs, and swing about and say their prayers." "How nasty!" "And--and he--was to go there," her sobs beginning again at the reminiscence, "and live there, and," dropping her voice to a whisper, "he asked me if I'd run away with him, and be married to him over there." Mattie clenched her fist spasmodically. She saw through the flimsy veil of romance, with a suddenness for which she was unprepared herself. She was a woman of the world, with a knowledge of the evil in it, on the instant. "Oh! that man was a big scamp, I'm sure of it--I know it!" "What makes you think that?" asked Harriet, imperiously. "Couldn't he have come to Suffolk Street, and told your father all about it like a--like a man?"