I must learn to keep my mouth shut, father said, and not tell all I
knew; and I profited by the lesson, and that is one reason, I suppose,
why I so rarely say what I think, or express an opinion whether
favorable or otherwise.

I do not believe I am deceitful, though all my life I have seen my
parents try to seem what they are not; that is, try to seem like rich
people, when sometimes father's practice brought him only a few hundreds
a year, and there was mother and myself and Tom to support. Tom is my
cousin--Tom McDonald--who lived with us and fell in love with me, though
I never tried to make him. I liked him ever so much, though he used to
tease me horribly, and put horn-bugs in my shoes, and worms on my neck,
and Jack-o'-lanterns in my room, and tip me off his sled into the snow;
but still I liked him, for with all his teasing he had a great, kind,
unselfish heart, and I shall never forget that look on his face when I
told him I could not be his wife. I did not like him as he liked me, and
I did not want to be married anyway, and if I did marry it must be to
some rich man. That was in Chicago, and the night before he started for
South America, where he was going to make his fortune, and he wanted me
to promise to wait for him, and said no one would ever love me as well
as he did.

I could not promise, because, even if he had all the gold mines in Peru,
I did not care to spend my days with him--to see him morning, noon, and
night, and all the time. It is a good deal to ask of a woman, and I told
him so, and he cried so hard--not loud, but in a pitiful kind of way,
which hurt me cruelly. I hear that sobbing sometimes now in my sleep,
and it's like the moan of the wind round that house on the prairie where
Tom's mother died. Poor Tom! I gave him a lock of my hair and let him