"Oh, as to that, make yourself easy," said Mara. "We shall all be dull enough when you are gone to content the most exacting." Still she spoke, not stopping her stitching, and raising her soft brown eyes with a frank, open look into Moses's--no tremor, not even of an eyelid. "You men must have everything," she continued, gayly, "the enterprise, the adventure, the novelty, the pleasure of feeling that you are something, and can do something in the world; and besides all this, you want the satisfaction of knowing that we women are following in chains behind your triumphal car!" There was a dash of bitterness in this, which was a rare ingredient in Mara's conversation. Moses took the word. "And you women sit easy at home, sewing and singing, and forming romantic pictures of our life as like its homely reality as romances generally are to reality; and while we are off in the hard struggle for position and the means of life, you hold your hearts ready for the first rich man that offers a fortune ready made." "The first!" said Mara. "Oh, you naughty! sometimes we try two or three." "Well, then, I suppose this is from one of them," said Moses, flapping down a letter from Boston, directed in a masculine hand, which he had got at the post-office that morning. Now Mara knew that this letter was nothing in particular, but she was taken by surprise, and her skin was delicate as peach-blossom, and so she could not help a sudden blush, which rose even to her golden hair, vexed as she was to feel it coming. She put the letter quietly in her pocket, and for a moment seemed too discomposed to answer. "You do well to keep your own counsel," said Moses. "No friend so near as one's self, is a good maxim. One does not expect young girls to learn it so early, but it seems they do." "And why shouldn't they as well as young men?" said Mara. "Confidence begets confidence, they say." "I have no ambition to play confidant," said Moses; "although as one who stands to you in the relation of older brother and guardian, and just on the verge of a long voyage, I might be supposed anxious to know." "And I have no ambition to be confidant," said Mara, all her spirit sparkling in her eyes; "although when one stands to you in the relation of an only sister, I might be supposed perhaps to feel some interest to be in your confidence." The words "older brother" and "only sister" grated on the ears of both the combatants as a decisive sentence. Mara never looked so pretty in her life, for the whole force of her being was awake, glowing and watchful, to guard passage, door, and window of her soul, that no treacherous hint might escape. Had he not just reminded her that he was only an older brother? and what would he think if he knew the truth?--and Moses thought the words _only sister_ unequivocal declaration of how the matter stood in her view, and so he rose, and saying, "I won't detain you longer from your letter," took his hat and went out.