BOY SENTIMENT. 61
ters are very shrewd in suspicions of this sort shrewder than brothers or fathers ; and like the good kind girl that she is, she wishes to humor even your weakness.
Madge drops into tea quite often: Nelly has something in particular to show, her, two or three times a week. Good Nelly, i perhaps she is making your troubles all j the greater! You gather large bunches ot grapes for Madge because she is a friend of Nelly s which she doesn t want at all, and very pretty bouquets, which she either drops, or pulls to pieces.
In the presence of your father one day, you drop some hint about Madge, in a very careless way a way shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion ; at which your father laughs. This is odd : it makes you wonder if your father was ever in love himself.
You rather think that he has been.
Madge s father is dead and her mother is poor ; and you sometimes dream, how- whatever your father may think or f eel you will some day make a large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a snug cot tage, -and have one horse for your carriage, and one for your wife, (not Madge, of course that is absurd) and a turtle shell cat for your wife s mother, and a pretty gate to the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery, and how your wife will come dancing down the
