“Lizzie, did you see how the tears came into Mimie’s eyes when Mr. Farquhar looked so displeased when she said good people were always dull?  I think she’s in love.”  Mary said the last words with grave emphasis, and felt like an oracle of twelve years of age.

“I don’t,” said Lizzie.  “I know I cry often enough when papa is cross, and I’m not in love with him.”

“Yes! but you don’t look as Mimie did.”

“Don’t call her Mimie—­you know papa does not like it?”

“Yes; but there are so many things papa does not like I can never remember them all.  Never mind about that; but listen to something I’ve got to tell you, if you’ll never, never tell.”

“No, indeed I won’t, Mary.  What is it?”

“Not to Mrs. Denbigh?”

“No, not even to Mrs. Denbigh.”

“Well, then, the other day—­last Friday, Mimie——­”

“Jemima!” interrupted the more conscientious Elizabeth.

“Jemima, if it must be so,” jerked out Mary, “sent me to her desk for an envelope, and what do you think I saw?”

“What?” asked Elizabeth, expecting nothing else than a red-hot Valentine, signed Walter Farquhar, pro Bradshaw, Farquhar, & Co., in full.

“Why, a piece of paper, with dull-looking lines upon it, just like the scientific dialogues; and I remember all about it.  It was once when Mr. Farquhar had been telling us that a bullet does not go in a straight line, but in a something curve, and he drew some lines on a piece of paper; and Mimie——­”

“Jemima!” put in Elizabeth.

“Well, well!  She had treasured it up, and written in corner, ’W.  F., April 3rd.’  Now, that’s rather like love, is not it?  For Jemima hates useful information just as much as I do, and that’s saying a great deal; and yet she had kept this paper, and dated it.”

“If that’s all, I know Dick keeps a paper with Miss Benson’s name written on it, and yet he’s not in love with her; and perhaps Jemima may like Mr. Farquhar, and he may not like her.  It seems such a little while since her hair was turned up, and he has always been a grave, middle-aged man ever since I can recollect; and then, have you never noticed how often he finds fault with her—­almost lectures her?”

“To be sure,” said Mary; “but he may be in love, for all that.  Just think how often papa lectures mamma; and yet, of course, they’re in love with each other.”

“Well! we shall see,” said Elizabeth.

Poor Jemima little thought of the four sharp eyes that watched her daily course while she sat alone, as she fancied, with her secret in her own room.  For, in a passionate fit of grieving, at the impatient, hasty temper which had made her so seriously displease Mr. Farquhar that he had gone away without remonstrance, without more leave-taking than a distant bow, she had begun to suspect that, rather than not be noticed at all by him, rather than be an object of indifference to him—­oh! far rather would she be an object