r, if you're not too gallant, that she was three years
older than you; the three seem to have stretched to a dozen. Luckily,
you didn't let Norton's snatching Emily from under your nose prey upon
cheek or heart. Nothing is damaged. You are sound and whole, and that is
why your friendship has been such a boon to me. You have saved me from
tilting against many windmills.

I suppose you'll think I'm "preambling" now, to put off the evil moment
of telling you about Ellaline de Nesville's girl. But no. For once
you're mistaken in me. After all, it isn't an evil moment. I'm surprised
at myself, doubly surprised at the girl; and both surprises are
agreeable ones.

I don't ask you if you remember Ellaline; for nobody who ever saw her
could forget her; at least, so it seems to me, after all these years,
and all the changes in myself. As I am now, hers is the last type with
which I should fall in love, provided I were fool enough to lose my head
for anyone. Yet I can't wonder at the adoration I gave her. She was
exactly the sort of girl to call out a boy's love, and she had all mine,
poor foolish wretch that I was. There's nothing more pathetic, I think,
at this distance, than a boy's passionate purity in his first
love--unless it's his disillusionment; for disillusion does no nature
good. It would have done mine great harm if I hadn't had a friend like
you to groan and grumble to.

You understand how I've always felt about this child she wished me to
care for. I was certain that Ellaline Number 2 would grow up as like
Ellaline Number 1 as this summer's rose is like last summer's, which
bloomed on the same bush.

At four years old the little thing undoubtedly had a dollish resemblance
to her mother. I thought I remembered that she had the first Ellaline's
great dark eyes, full of incipient coquetry, and curly black lashes,
which the little flirt already knew how to use, by instinct. The same
sort of mouth, too, which to look at makes a boy believe in a personal
Cupid, and a man in a personal devil. I had a dim recollection of
chestnut-brown hair, falling around a tiny face shaped like Ellaline's;
"heart-shape" we used to call it, Emily and I, when we were both under
our little French cousin's thumb, in the oldest days of all, before even
Emily began to find her out.

I wonder if a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth? I've
never given much thought to infantine phenomena of any kind; still, I'm
inclined to believ