“Where?” The girl’s voice was hard. “On the train.” “He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice the week before—yes, and yesterday. And he came out with me once.” She counted out the times as if they were a contravention. “I don’t see how I am going to help it if people speak to me, I can’t _tell_ them to go away. _I_ don’t want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one day; was that commented on, too?” There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth by outraged modesty—and there is no modesty that feels itself more outraged than that of the girl who knows she has given some slight cause for reproof. “Dosia, be reasonable,” said Lois, annoyed that her talk was being made so hard for her. “I know it’s horrid to be ‘spoken to,’ but Justin is very particular, and he feels that we are responsible for you. And, besides, you wouldn’t want it thought that you liked Lawson’s society. I am to go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the hour for your lesson changed.” She paused for some answer, but none came, and she went on: “I told Justin that he need not worry, there was no danger of your caring too much for _Lawson_! That’s nonsense. Why, you know all _about_ him, and just what he amounts to. But, of course, if you are seen with him——” “You need not say any more. I never want to speak to him again!” said Dosia, strangling. She swept her things from the table and rushed up to her own room in a whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the imputation in Lois’ tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what another despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate of him as she had hitherto been to the public one. She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something that she had been unconsciously dreading had come upon her—the notice of her little world. Before it had been voiced to her by Lois she had persistently considered herself unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion for her being “spoken to,” yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment that she had not been quite true to her highest instincts.