"Good gracious me, how curious and prying you are!" said Harriet, snatching the packet from her hand. "I wish I had never told you a syllable--I wish you'd leave my things alone!" "I beg your pardon--I only asked. It _was_ wrong." "Well, there, I forgive you; but you are so tiresome, and old-fashioned. I can't make you out--I never shall--you're not like other girls." "Was I brought up like other girls, you know?" was the sad question. "No, no--I forgot that--I beg your pardon, Mattie; I didn't mean it for a taunt." "God bless you, I know that. What are you doing?" "Getting rid of these," thrusting the letters in the candle flame as she spoke. "I can trust you, but not them, Mattie." "I'd hold them over the fire-place, then. If they drop on the toilet-table, we shall have the house a-fire." Harriet took the advice proffered, and removed her combustibles to the place recommended. Mattie, on her knees by the box, watched the process. "And there's an end of _them_," Harriet said at last, in a decisive tone. "And of him--say of him?" "We parted for ever--but I shall always think of him--think, too, that perhaps I _was_ very young and thoughtless and vain, to lead him on, or to be led on. But oh! Mattie, he did love me--he wouldn't have harmed me for the world!" "He hasn't spoken of writing--you haven't promised to write any more." "No--it was a parting for _ever_. Haven't I said so, over and over again?" "Then you'll soon forget him, Miss Harriet--try and forget him, for your own sake--you can't tell whether he wasn't making game of you, for certain; he didn't act well, for he wasn't a boy, was he? And now go to sleep, and wake up in the morning your old self, Miss." "I'll try--I must try!" "I don't think that this fine gentleman will ever turn up again; if he does, you'll be older to take your own part. Oh! dear, how contrary things do go, to be sure." "What's the matter now?" "I did think I knew whom you were to marry." "Who was it?" said Harriet, with evident interest in her question. "Well, I thought, Miss Harriet, that you'd grow up, and grow up to be a young woman, and that Master Sidney underneath, would grow up, and grow up to be a young man, and you'd fall naturally in love with one another--marry, and be oh! so happy. When I'm hard at work at the lessons he or his father writes out for me sometimes, I catch myself forgetting all about them, and thinking of you and him together--and I your servant, perhaps, or little housekeeper. I've always thought that that would come to pass some day, and that he'd grow rich, and make a lady of you--and it made me happy to think that the two, who'd been perhaps the kindest in all the world to me, would marry some fine day. I've pictered it--pictured it," she corrected, "many and many a time, until I fancied at last it must come true." "Master Sidney, indeed!" was the disparaging comment.