“You are mistaken; she was always mature.”

“She stopped in the process of maturity long ago.  It is her genius which takes her on.  You advance by experience.”

“I shall learn nothing more.”

“Of course you have suffered immensely, and endured that which isolates you from the rest of us.”

“You are as wise as ever.”

“Well, I am married, you know, and shall grow no wiser.  Marriage puts an end to the wisdom of women; they need it no longer.”

“You are nineteen years old?”

“What is the use of talking to you?  Besides, if we keep on we may tell secrets that had better not be revealed.  We might not like each other so well; friendship is apt to dull if there is no ground for speculation left.  Let us keep the bloom on the fruit, even if we know there is a worm at the core.”

I owed it to her that I never had any confidante.  My proclivities were for speaking what I felt; but her strong common-sense influenced me greatly against it; her teaching was the more easy to me, as she never invaded my sentiments.

Her visit was the occasion of our exchanging civilities with our acquaintances, which we neglected when alone.  Tea parties were always fashionable in Surrey.  Veronica went with us to one, given by our cousin, Susan Morgeson.  She had taken tea out but twice, since she was grown, she told us, then it was with her friend Lois Randall, a seamstress.  To this girl she read the contents of her blank-books, and Lois in her turn confided to Veronica her own compositions.  Essays were her forte.  We met her at Susan Morgeson’s, and, as I never saw her without her having on some article given her by Veronica, this occasion was no exception.  She wore an exquisitely embroidered purple silk apron, over a dull blue dress.  I saw Verry’s grimace when her eyes fell on it, and could not help saying, “I hope Lois’s essays are better than her taste in dress.”

“She is an idiot in colors; but she admires what I wear so much that she fancies the same must become her.”

“As they become you?”

“I make a study of dress—­an anomaly must.  It may be wicked, but what can I do?  I love to look well.”

The dress she wore then was an India stuff, of linen, with a cream-colored ground, and a vivid yellow silk thread woven in stripes through it; each stripe had a cinnamon-colored edge.  There were no ornaments about her, except a band of violet-colored ribbon round her head.  When tea was brought in, she asked me in a whisper whether it was tea or coffee in the cup which was given her.

“Why, Cass,” said Helen, “are you making a wonderment because she does not know?  It is strange that you have not known that she drinks neither.”

“What does she drink?”

“Is it eccentric to drink milk?” Verry asked, swallowing the tea with an accustomed air.  “I think this must be coffee, it stings my mouth so.”