half. Poor, handsome Ross, to think that all your manifold charms should
have purchased you only ugly little me!" and she laughed a merry, mocking
laugh at his protesting hug. "It's true, though--it's the very climax of
opposites, a perfection of contrasts." Then, her light manner gone, she
added: "You are very, very good to me, Ross. He would never have been so
patient of my old griefs and lost loves. I told you my masculine cousins
were always crying for the grapes that hung out of their reach, you know."
Then suddenly growing grave: "Oh, Ross, it was not my fault: I could not
help it. I think the boys got to pitying me because they thought my life
was hard, and because their sisters treated me very cruelly sometimes.
Then my uncles very foolishly ordained that I should teach their sons
their Latin and help them with their studies. So out of school-hours my
time was mostly spent with one or the other, or all of them. Sheldon
Wilber and I are of the same age, and having been my father's constant
companion, I was better up in all his studies than he was himself; so I
used to do his college lessons with him, until he got to thinking, as he
used to say, I was his very breath. Then afterward I gave the other two
the benefit of what we had studied, got them out of scrapes, and indeed,
being with them so much, kept them out. Don't let's talk about them any
more, Ross: I have 'fessed' all now."

"Not all, my sweet: you have not told me who it is that has shut your
heart from us all."

"Don't, Ross!" and she shrank away from him as if he had struck her a
blow.

"Ah, well, my wife, keep your secret: I'll not touch your sacred past.
I'll try to learn to be content with my little sister, thankful I have so
much."