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agitation? Anyone would suppose that your uncle had already refused his consent, and had threatened you both with dire penalties into the bargain!”
    “Oh!” breathed Fanny, looking eagerly up at her. “Do you mean that you think he won’t refuse it?”
    “Oh, no!” said Abby. “I am very sure that he will! And although I have no very high opinion of his judgment I give him credit for not being such a niddicock as to accept the first offer made to him for your hand! A pretty guardian he would be if he allowed you to become riveted before your first season! Yes, I know that sets up all your bristles, my darling, and makes you ready to pull caps with me, but I beg you won’t! Your uncle may dream of a splendid alliance for you, but you know that I don’t! I only dream of a happy one.”
    “I know—oh, I know!” Fanny declared. “And so you will support me! Best of my aunts, say that you will!”
    “Why, yes, if you can convince me that your first love will also be your last love!”
    “But I have told you!” Fanny said, sitting back on her heels, and staring at her in rising indignation. “I could never love anyone as I love Stacy! Good God, how can you— you !—talk like that to me? I know—my aunt told me!—how my grandfather repulsed the man you loved! And you’ve never loved another, and—and your life was ruined!”
    “Well, I thought so at the time,” Abby admitted. A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth. “I must own, however, that whenever that first suitor of mine is recalled to my mind I can only be thankful that your grandfather did repulse him! You know, Fanny, the melancholy truth is that one’s first love very rarely bears the least resemblance to one’s last, and most enduring love! He is the man one marries, and with whom one lives happily ever after!”
    “But you have not married!” muttered Fanny rebelliously.
    “Very true, but not because I carried a broken heart in my bosom! I have fallen in and out of love a dozen times, I daresay. And as for your Aunt Mary—! She, you know, was always accounted the Beauty of the family, and you might have reckoned her suitors by the score! The first of them was as unlike your Uncle George as any man could be.”
    “I thought that my grandfather had arranged that marriage?” interpolated Fanny.
    “Oh, no!” replied Abby. “He certainly approved of it, but George was only one of three eligible suitors! He was neither the most handsome nor the most dashing of them, and he bore not the smallest resemblance to any of your aunt’s first loves, but theirs is a very happy marriage, I promise you.”
    “Yes, but I am not like my aunt,” returned Fanny. “I daresay she would have been as happy with any other amiable man, because she has a happy disposition, besides being very—very conformable!” She twinkled naughtily up at Abby. “Which I am not! My aunt is like a—oh, a deliriously soft cushion, which may be pushed and pummelled into any shape you choose!—but I—I know what I want, and have a great deal of resolution into the bargain!”
    “More like a bolster, in fact,” agreed Abby, with an affability she was far from feeling.
    Fanny laughed. “Yes, if you like— worst of my aunts! In any event, I mean to marry Stacy Calverleigh, whatever my uncle may say or do!”
    Well aware that few things were more invigorating to high-spirited adolescents than opposition, Abby replied instantly: “Oh, certainly! But your father, you know, was an excellent dragsman, and he was used to say that you should always get over heavy ground as light as possible. I am strongly of the opinion that you—and Mr Calverleigh—should refrain from declaring your intentions to your uncle until you can also present him with proof of the durability of your attachment.”
    “He wouldn’t care: you must know he wouldn’t! And if you mean to say that I must wait until I come of age—oh, no, you couldn’t be so heartless! Four whole years—! When