"Sally dear, you often speak in that way," said Mara, "but really and seriously, you do yourself great injustice. You could not certainly have been going on as you have these six months past with a man you did not care for." "Well, I do care for him, 'sort o','" said Sally; "but is that any reason I should break my heart for his going?--that's too much for any man." "But, Sally, you _must_ know that Moses loves you." "I'm not so sure," said Sally, freakishly tossing her head and laughing. "If he did not," said Mara, "why has he sought you so much, and taken every opportunity to be with you? I'm sure I've been left here alone hour after hour, when my only comfort was that it was because my two best friends loved each other, as I know they must some time love some one better than they do me." The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and Mara's voice faltered on these last words, and she put her hands over her eyes. Sally turned quickly and looked at her, then giving her hair a sudden fold round her shoulders, and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked up into her face with an air of more gravity than she commonly used. "Now, Mara, what a wicked, inconsistent fool I have been! Did you feel lonesome?--did you care? I ought to have seen that; but I'm selfish, I love admiration, and I love to have some one to flatter me, and run after me; and so I've been going on and on in this silly way. But I didn't know you cared--indeed, I didn't--you are such a deep little thing. Nobody can ever tell what you feel. I never shall forgive myself, if you have been lonesome, for you are worth five hundred times as much as I am. You really do love Moses. I don't." "I do love him as a dear brother," said Mara. "Dear fiddlestick," said Sally. "Love is love; and when a person loves all she can, it isn't much use to talk so. I've been a wicked sinner, that I have. Love? Do you suppose I would bear with Moses Pennel all his ins and outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him before myself in everything, as you do? No, I couldn't; I haven't it in me; but you have. He's a sinner, too, and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara, I have tormented him well--there's some comfort in that." "It's no comfort to me," said Mara. "I see his heart is set on you--the happiness of his life depends on you--and that he is pained and hurt when you give him only cold, trifling words when he needs real true love. It is a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil, and you ought not to make light of it."