"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess! You'll never guess it in the world!" "Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!" "Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear so close that it tingled: "Dolls!" My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed. Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!" "For our sick soldiers!" "Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says, 'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have it broad." "Life is strife indeed to her," I said. "Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly streak'--as if she had any such thing!" "Why did my mother bring her to you?" "Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's wonderful!" "Does your father think so, too?" "My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such prejudiced fathers." XXIX A GNAWING IN THE DARK On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs. Sessions, Estelle and Cecile formed one group, Squire Sessions and Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle, and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society. Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?" I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance dates from Gallatin." With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no, it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh! why did it have to be a stripling's?