“It makes so much difference as to how you say a thing,” thought poor Lucina, “and I know I was afraid lest he think me too glad to have him come.  I wonder if I did not say enough, or did not say it pleasantly.”

It did not once occur to Lucina that Jerome might mean to slight her, and might stay away because he wished to do so.  She had been so petted and held precious and desirable during her whole sweet life, that she could scarcely imagine any one would flout her, though so timid and fearful of hurting and being hurt was she by nature, that without so much love and admiration she would have been a piteous thing.

She decided that it must be her fault that Jerome had not come.  She reflected that he was very proud; she remembered, and the memory stung her with something of the old pain of the happening, how he would not take the cakes when she was a child, how he would not take her money to buy shoes.  She shrank even then, remembering the flash with which he had turned upon her.

“I did not say enough, I was so afraid of saying too much, and that is why he has not come,” she told herself, and sadly troubled her gentle heart thereby.

The tears came into her eyes and rolled slowly down her fair cheeks as she sat there in the dusk.  She did not yet feel towards Jerome as he towards her.  She had been too young and childish when she had known him for love to have taken fast root in her heart; and she was not one to love fully until she felt her footing firm, and her place secure in a lover’s affections.  Still, who can tell what may be in the heart of the gentlest and most transparent little girl, who follows obediently at her mother’s apron-strings?  In those old days when Abigail had put her little daughter to bed, heard her say her prayers for forgiveness of her sins of innocence, and blessings upon those whom she loved best, then kissed the fair baby face sunken in its white pillow, she never dreamed what happened after she had gone down-stairs.  Every night, for a long time after she had first spoken to Jerome, did the small Lucina, her heart faintly stirred into ignorant sweetness with the first bloom of young romance, slip out of her bed after her mother had gone, kneel down upon her childish knees, and ask another blessing for Jerome Edwards.

“Please, God, bless that boy, and give him shoes and gingerbread, because he won’t take them from me,” Lucina used to pray, then climb into bed again with a little wild scramble of hurry.

Sometimes, when she was a little girl, though her mother never knew it, Lucina used to be thinking about Jerome, and building artless air-castles when she bent her grave childish brow over her task of needle-work.  Sometimes, on the heights of these castles reared by her innocent imagination, she and Jerome put arms around each other’s necks and embraced and kissed, and her mother sat close by and did not know.

She also did not know that often, when she had curled Lucina’s hair with special care on the Sabbath day, and dressed her in her best frock, that her little daughter, demurely docile under her maternal hands, was eagerly wondering if Jerome would not think her pretty in her finery.