"John, don't be foolish."

"I will, if I like; though perhaps not quite so foolish as some other
people; so listen:--'Imprimis,' as saith Shakspeare--Imprimis, height,
full five feet four; a stature historically appertaining to great men,
including Alexander of Macedon and the First Consul."

"Oh, oh!" said I, reproachfully; for this was our chief bone of
contention--I hating, he rather admiring, the great ogre of the day,
Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Imprimis, of a slight, delicate person, but not lame as once was."

"No, thank God!"

"Thin, rather-"

"Very--a mere skeleton!"

"Face elongated and pale-"

"Sallow, John, decidedly sallow."

"Be it so, sallow. Big eyes, much given to observation, which means
hard staring. Take them off me, Phineas, or I'll not lie on the grass
a minute longer. Thank you. To return: Imprimis and finis (I'm grand
at Latin now, you see)--long hair, which, since the powder tax, has
resumed its original blackness, and is--any young damsel would say,
only we count not a single one among our acquaintance--exceedingly
bewitching."

I smiled, feeling myself colour a little too, weak invalid as I was. I
was, nevertheless, twenty years old; and although Jael and Sally were
the only specimens of the other sex which had risen on my horizon, yet
once or twice, since I had read Shakspeare, I had had a boy's lovely
dreams of the divinity of womanhood. They began, and ended--mere
dreams. Soon dawned the bare, hard truth, that my character was too
feeble and womanish to be likely to win any woman's reverence or love.
Or, even had this been possible, one sickly as I was, stricken with
hereditary disease, ought never to seek to perpetuate it by marriage.
I therefore put from me, at once and for ever, every feeling of that
kind; and during my whole life--I thank God!--have never faltered in my
resolution. Friendship was given me for love--duty for happiness. So
best, and I was satisfied.

This conviction, and the struggle succeeding it--for, though brief, it
was but natural that it should have been a hard struggle--was the only
secret that I had kept from John. It had happened some months now, and
was quite over and gone, so that I could smile at his fun, and shake at
him my "bewitching" black locks, calling him a foolish boy. And while
I said it, the notion slowly dawning during the long gaze he had
complained of, forced itself upon me, clear as daylight, that he was
not a "boy" any lo