When my eye met Louis’ at the table next morning, I felt as if I had committed an unpardonable sin.  My whole being had trembled with the deep respect and admiration I had felt for him since the moment we met, and I certainly had given him cause to understand me to be incapable of responding to his innermost thought.  I felt he would treat me differently, but a second look convinced me that such was not the fact.  His noble nature could not illtreat any one, and I only saw a look of positive endurance, “I am waiting,” photographed on his features, and made manifest in all his manner toward me, and a determined effort to put me at ease resulted at last in forcing me to appear as before, while all the time a sharp pain gnawed at my heart, and, unlike most girls, I was not easy until I told my mother of it all.

She stroked my dark hair and said: 

“You and he have only seen nineteen short years.  Wisdom is the ripened fruit of years; you cannot judge of your future from to-day.”

That comforted me, and I felt better in my mind.  I planned something to say to Louis, but every opportunity was lost, and the last week of his stay had already begun.  The plans of his little mother had been confided to me, and work had commenced.

There was to be an addition of four large rooms on the west side of our house, and they were planned in accordance with Clara’s ideas.  She did not call them her’s, and started with the understanding that the improvements were just a little present for her dear cousins.  Best of all, we were to have a bow window in one of the rooms, and this was something so new, so different, it seemed a greater thing to me than the architecture of the ancient cathedrals.  A bow window, and the panes of glass double, yes, treble the size of the old ones!

I heard father say to mother that this new part would make the old one look very shabby; but Louis had told me his mother intended to do all father would allow her to, and encourage him a little, etc.  And we were to have a new fence.  You cannot imagine how fairy-like this all seemed to me, and I could hardly believe what I saw.  It seemed as if we were in a wonderland country, and I had moved as in a dream up to the last hour of my walk with Louis.  Then I seemed to awake, as if shaken by a rough hand, and since then I had been striving to appear what I was not, all the time thinking that Louis misunderstood me, and here we were in the last week of his stay and no word as yet in explanation.  I had thought it over until it became a truth to me that after all he had not meant that he loved me other than as a sister, and it also seemed to me that was just what I needed.  What remained was to have it settled between us, and to do that I must clothe my thoughts with words, else how could he know how I felt.  It seemed, too, that it was sheer boldness on my part to dream for a moment that Louis spoke of life’s crowning love.  He meant to be as a brother to me, and again I sighed, as I stood at the ironing table, “Ah, Emily Minot, you are a born mistake, that’s just what you are!” and as I sighed I spoke these words, and, turning, found myself face to face with Louis, who had just come from the village.  He never could wait for the stage to come, and had been over as usual for letters.