Tie it for me, Bab."
"Though old of body, you are young in mentalaty," I said. But he only
laughed, and then asked about the pin, which I wore over my heart.
"Where did you get that?" he asked in quite a feirce voice.
I told him, but not quite all. It was the first time I had concealed an
AMOUR from my parents, having indeed had but few, and I felt wicked
and clandestine. But, alas, it is the way of the heart to conceal its
deepest feelings, save for blushes, which are beyond bodily control.
My father, however, mearly sighed and observed:
"So it has come at last!"
"What has come at last?" I asked, but feeling that he meant Love. For
although forty-two and not what he once was, he still remembers his
Youth.
But he refused to anser, and inquired politely if I felt to much
grown-up, with the Allowence and so on, to be held on knees and
occasionaly tickeled, as in other days.
Which I did not.
That night I stood at the window of my Chamber and gazed with a heaving
heart at the Gray residense, which is next door. Often before I had
gazed at its walls, and considered them but brick and morter, and
needing paint. Now my emotions were diferent. I realized that a House is
but a shell, covering and protecting its precious contents from weather
and curious eyes, et cetera.
As I stood there, I percieved a light in an upper window, where
the nursery had once been in which Tom--in those days when a child,
Tommy--and I had played as children, he frequently pulling my hair and
never thinking of what was to be.
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