“No, I haven’t!” said Harriet, who would tell the truth about this rankling misfortune.

“Well, then, it was because the men knew you wouldn’t have them.”

“No, it wasn’t!” said Harriet, “it was because they knew I would.”

“Nonsense!” cried Miss Anna, impatiently.  “You mustn’t try to palm off so much mock modesty on me, Harriet.”

“Ah, I am too old to fib about it, Anna!  I leave that to my many sisters in misfortune.”

Harriet looked at her friend’s work curiously:  she was darning Professor Hardage’s socks.

“Why do you do that, Anna?  Socks are dirt cheap.  You might as well go out into the country and darn sheep.”

“Ah, you have never had a brother—­my brother! so you cannot understand.  I can feel his heels pressing against my stitches when he is walking a mile away.  And I know whenever his fingers touch the buttons I have put back.  Besides, don’t you like to see people make bad things good, and things with holes in them whole again?  Why, that is half the work of the world, Harriet!  It is not his feet that make these holes,” continued Miss Anna, nicely, “it is his shoes, his big, coarse shoes.  And his clothes wear out so soon.  He has a tailor who misfits him so exactly from year to year that there is never the slightest deviation in the botch.  I know beforehand exactly where all the creases will begin.  So I darn and mend.  The idea of his big, soft, strong feet making holes in anything! but, then, you have never tucked him in bed at night, my dear, so you know nothing about his feet.”

“Not I!” said Harriet, embarrassed but not shocked.

Miss Anna continued fondly in a lowered voice:  “You should have heard him the other day when he pulled open a drawer:  ‘Why, Anna,’ he cried, ’where on earth did I get all these new socks?  The pair I left in here must have been alive:  they’ve bred like rabbits.’—­’Why, you’ve forgotten,’ I said.  ’It’s your birthday; and I have made you over, so that you are as good as new—­me!’”

“I never have to be reminded of my birthday,” remarked Harriet, reflectively.  “Anna, do you know that I have lived about one-eighth of the time since Columbus discovered America:  doesn’t that sound awful!”

“Ah, but you don’t look it,” said Miss Anna, artistically, “and that’s the main object.”

“Oh, I don’t feel it,” retorted Harriet, “and that’s the main object too.  I’m as young as I ever was when I’m away from home; but I declare, Anna, there are times when my mother can make me feel I’m about the oldest thing alive.”

“Oh, come now! you mustn’t begin to talk that way, or I’ll have to give you more of the antidote.  You are threatened with a relapse.”

“No more,” ordered Harriet with a forbidding hand, “and I repeat what I said.  Of course you know I never gossip, Anna; but when I talk to you, I do not feel as though I were talking to anybody.”