All had to be gone about in so ceremonious a manner, too, at least at first--when I made my formal call on Miss Huntingdon, who received me in her parlour with prim civility, as if I had come to order a leghorn hat of the best. "My mother's compliments, and might Miss Charlotte Anderson be allowed to accompany Agnes Anne to tea at four hours that day? I would be responsible--yes, I knew Miss Huntingdon to be most particular upon this point--for the convoy of the young ladies to the school-house, and would see Miss Anderson safe home again." My mother winked at these promenades, because in her heart of hearts she was more than a little jealous of Irma. Charlotte Anderson she could understand. She was of her own far-off kin, but Irma and her brother had descended upon us, as it were, from another world. Why Agnes Anne meddled I cannot so well make out, unless it were the mania which at a certain age attacks most nice girls--that of distributing their brothers among their dearest friends--as far, that is, as they will go round. So Charlotte and I walked under the tall firs of the Academy wood in the hope that Irma might be passing that way. I escorted her home in full sight of all Eden Valley--that was always on the look-out for whatever might happen in the way of courtship about the shop of the famous mantua-maker. And yet (I know people will think I am lying) never, I say, did I find Miss Irma so desirable in my eyes as when I saw her at Heathknowes during these days of folly. It was not that she was kinder to me. She appeared not to think of me either one way or the other. She curtsied to me, like a bird, flirting the train of her gown like a wagtail on a stone by the running stream. One forenoon she met us, strolling with little Louis by the hand, her black hair crowned with scarlet hips--those berries of the wild dog-rose which grow so great in our country lanes. She waved us a joyous little salute from the top of a stile, on which she perched as lightly as if joyful graces were fluttering about her, and she herself ready to take wing. But she never so much as looked wistful, but let me go my way with a single flirt of a kerchief she was adjusting about her brother's neck. As for me I was ready to hang myself in self-contempt and hatred of poor innocent Charlotte Anderson, who smiled and imagined, doubtless, that she was fulfilling the end for which she had come to Miss Huntingdon's.