to think any harm of the poor thing."

"Poor thing? Why this magnanimous compassion, mother?"

"Oh, nothing. But I know how I was myself when I was a girl. I used
almost to die of hunger for something to happen. Can you remember just
what you said in your letter?"

Verrian laughed. "NO, I can't. But I don't believe I said half enough.
You're nervous, mother."

"Yes, I am. But don't you get to worrying. I merely got to thinking how
I should hate to have anybody's unhappiness mixed up with this happiness
of ours. I do so want your pleasure in your success to be pure, not
tainted with the pain of any human creature."

Verrian answered with light cynicism: "It will be tainted with the pain
of the fellows who don't like me, or who haven't succeeded, and they'll
take care to let me share their pain if ever they can. But if you mean
that merry maiden up country, she's probably thinking, if she thinks
about it at all, that she's the luckiest girl in the United States to
have got out of an awful scrape so easily. At the worst, I only had fun
with her in my letter. Probably she sees that she has nothing to grieve
for but her own break."

"No, and you did just as you should have done; and I am glad you don't
feel bitterly about it. You don't, do you?"

"Not the least."