“I was all ready to marry him a few weeks ago,” Charlotte said, with a kind of dignified reproach.

Thomas colored.  “I know it, Charlotte; I ought not to have expected—­I suppose you couldn’t get over it so soon.  I couldn’t if I had been in your place, and been ready to marry anybody.  But I didn’t know about girls; I didn’t know but they were different; I always heard they got over things quicker.  I ought not to have thought—­ But, oh, Charlotte, if I wait, if you have a little more time, don’t you think you will feel different about it?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“But he is such a good-for-nothing dog to treat you the way he does, Charlotte!” Thomas cried out, in a great burst of wrath and jealous love.

“I don’t want to hear another word like that, Thomas Payne,” Charlotte said, sternly, and the young man drooped before her.

“I beg your pardon, Charlotte,” said he.  “I suppose I ought not to have spoken so, if you—­ Oh, Charlotte, then you don’t think you ever can get over this and think a little bit of me?”

“No,” replied Charlotte, in a steady voice, “I don’t think I ever can, Thomas.”

“I don’t mean that I am trying to get you away from any other fellow, Charlotte—­I wouldn’t do anything like that; but if he won’t—­ Oh, Charlotte, are you sure?”

“I don’t think I ever can,” repeated Charlotte, monotonously, looking at the wall past Thomas.

“I’ve always thought so much of you, Charlotte, though I never told you so.”

“You’d better not now.”

“Yes, I’m going to, now.  I’ve got to.  Then I’ll never say another word—­I’ll go away, and never say another word.”  Thomas got up, and brought his chair close to Charlotte’s.  “Don’t move away,” he pleaded; “let me sit here near you once—­I never shall again.  I’m going to tell you, Charlotte.  I used to look across at you sitting in the meeting-house, Sabbath days, when I was a boy, and think you were the handsomest girl I ever saw.  Then I did try to go with you once before I went to college; perhaps you didn’t know that I meant anything, but I did.  Barney was in the way then a little, but I didn’t think much of it.  I didn’t know that he really meant to go with you.  You let me go home with you two or three times—­perhaps you remember.”

Charlotte nodded.

“I never forgot,” said Thomas Payne.  “Well, father found it out, and he had a talk with me.  He made me promise to wait till I got through college before I said anything to you; he was doing a good deal for me, you know.  So I waited, and the first thing I knew, when I came home, they said Barney Thayer was waiting on you, and I thought it was all settled and there was nothing more to be done.  I made up my mind to bear it like a man and make the best of it, and I did.  But this spring when I was through college, and that happened betwixt you and Barney, when he—­didn’t come back to you, and you didn’t seem to mind