"They are forcible ones I must admit," said Miss Emmerson, smiling affectionately on her niece; "but now for the other kind of love." "Why, Anna is my friend, you know," cried Julia, with eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "I love her, because she has feelings congenial with my own; she has so much wit, is so amusing, so frank, so like a girl of talents--so like--like every thing I admire myself." "It is a pity that one so highly gifted cannot furnish herself with frocks," said the aunt, with a little more than her ordinary dryness of manner, "and suffer you to work for those who want them more." "You forget it is in order to remember me," said Julia, in a manner that spoke her own ideas of the value of the gift. "One would think such a friendship would not require any thing to remind one of its existence," returned the aunt. "Why! it is not that she will forget me without it, but that she may have something by her to remind her of me----" said Julia rapidly, but pausing as the contradiction struck even herself. "I understand you perfectly, my child," interrupted the aunt, "merely as an unnecessary security, you mean." "To make assurance doubly sure," cried Charles Weston with a laugh. "Oh! you laugh, Mr. Weston," said Julia with a little anger; "but I have often said, you were incapable of friendship." "Try me!" exclaimed the youth fervently. "Do not condemn me without a trial." "How can I?" said Julia, laughing in her turn. "You are not a girl." "Can girls then only feel friendship?" inquired Charles, taking the seat which Miss Emmerson had relinquished. "I sometimes think so," said Julia, with her own good-humoured smile. "You are too gross--too envious--in short, you never see such friendships between men as exist between women." "Between girls, I will readily admit," returned the youth. "But let us examine this question after the manner of the courts--" "Nay, if you talk law I shall quit you," interrupted the young lady gaily. "Certainly one so learned in the subject need not dread a cross-examination," cried the youth, in her own manner. "Well, proceed," cried the lady. "I have driven aunt Margaret from the field, and you will fare no better, I can assure you." "Men, you say, are too gross to feel a pure friendship; in the first place, please to explain yourself on this point." "Why I mean, that your friendships are generally interested; that it requires services and good offices to support it." "While that of women depends on--" "Feeling alone." "But what excites this feeling?" asked Charles with a smile. "What? why sympathy--and a knowledge of each other's good qualities." "Then you think Miss Miller has more good qualities than Katherine Emmerson," said Weston. "When did I ever say so?" cried Julia in surprise. "I infer it from your loving her better, merely," returned the young man with a little of Miss Emmerson's dryness.