se letters come together. It seems funny to you--very.
And as a proof that they are made at random, you make a T or an R before
them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it.

Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you cross it
out,--cross it a great many ways, even holding it up to the light to see
that there should be no air of intention about it.

----You need have no fear, Clarence, that your hieroglyphics will be
studied so closely. Accidental as they are, you are very much more
interested in them than any one else.

----It is a common fallacy of this dream in most stages of life, that a
vast number of persons employ their time chiefly in spying out its
operations.

Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know of. Perhaps it is the
very reason, though you do not suspect it then, why you care so much for
her. At any rate she is a friend of Nelly's, and it is your duty not to
dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling of matters,--for
sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of this sort, shrewder than
brothers or fathers,--and, like the good, kind girl that she is, she
wishes to humor even your weakness.

Madge drops in to tea quite often: Nelly has something _in particular_
to show her, two or three times a week. Good Nelly! perhaps she is
making your troubles all the greater. You gather large bunches of grapes
for Madge--because she is a friend of Nelly's--which she doesn't want at
all, and very pretty bouquets, which she either drops or pulls to
pieces.

In the presence of your father one day you drop some hint about Madge
in a very careless way,--a way shrewdly calculated to lay all
suspicion,--at which your father laughs. This is odd; it makes you
wonder if your father was ever in love himself.

You rather think that he has been.

Madge's father is dead, and her mother is poor; and you sometimes dream
how--whatever your father may think or feel--you will some day make a
large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and have
one horse for your carriage and one for your wife, (not Madge, of
course--that is absurd,) and a turtleshell cat for your wife's mother,
and a pretty gate to the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery; and how
your wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,--as the Wife does
in Mr. Irving's "Sketch-Book,"--and how she will have a harp in the
parlor, and will wear white dresses with a blue sash.

----Poor Clarence, it never o