Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
This time my mouth shut itself up, and no mortal force could open it.
I stopped crying, and sat with folded arms. Mother said what she had
to say, and then I came to you, my dear old Journal.
Yes, he likes me and I like him. Come now, let's out with it once for
all. He loves me and I love him. You are just a little bit too late,
mother.
Oct 1.-I never can write down all the things that have happened. The
very day after I wrote that mother had forbidden my going to the
class, Charley came to see her, and they had a regular fight
together. He has told me about it since. Then, as he could not
prevail, his uncle wrote, told her it would be the making of Charley
to be settled down on one young lady instead of hovering from flower
to flower, as he was doing now. Then Jenny came with her pretty ways,
and cried, and told mother what a darling brother Charley was. She
made a good deal, too, out of his having lost both father and mother,
and needing my affection so much. Mother shut herself up, and I have
no doubt prayed over it. I really believe she prays over every new
dress she buys. Then she sent for me and talked beautifully, and I
behaved abominably.
At last she said she would put us on one year's probation. Charley
might spend one evening here every two weeks, when she should always
be present. We were never to be seen together in public, nor would
she allow us to correspond. If, at the end of the year, we were both
as eager for it as we are now, she would consent to our engagement.
Of course we shall be, so I consider myself as good as engaged now.
Dear me! how funny it seems.
Oct 2.-Charley is not at all pleased with mother's terms, but no one
would guess it from his manner to her. His coming is always the
signal for her trotting down stairs; he goes to meet her and offers
her a chair, as if he was delighted to see her. We go on with the
lessons, as this gives us a chance to sit pretty close together, and
when I am writing my exercises and he corrects them, I rather think a
few little things get on to the paper that sound nicely to us, but
would not strike mother very agreeably. For instance, last night
Charley wrote:
"Is your mother never sick? A nice little headache or two would be so
convenient to us!"
And I wrote back.
"You dear old horrid thing. How can you be so selfish?"
Jan. 15, 1833.-I have been trying to think whether I am any happier
to-day than I was at this time a year ago. If I am not, I suppose it
is the tantalizing way in which I am placed in regard to Charley. We
have so much to say to each other that we can't say before mother,
and that we cannot say in writing, because a correspondence is one of
the forbidden things. He says he entered into no contract not to
write, and keeps slipping little notes into my hand; but I don't
think that quite right. Mother hears us arguing and disputing about
it, though she does not know the subject under discussion, and to-day
she said to me:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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