her Yankee circumstance; and it seemed the consensus of their testimony
that she had really been made love to, and not so very much too soon, at
her age of sixteen, for most of their heroines were not much older. The
terms of Gregory's declaration and of its withdrawal were mystifying, but
not more mystifying than many such things, and from what happened in the
novels she read, the affair might be trusted to come out all right of
itself in time. She was rather thoughtfuller for it, and once her mother
asked her what was the matter with her. "Oh, I guess I'm getting old,
motha," she said, and turned the question off. She would not have minded
telling her mother about Gregory, but it would not have been the custom;
and her mother would have worried, and would have blamed him. Clementina
could have more easily trusted her father with the case, but so far as
she knew fathers never were trusted with anything of the kind. She would
have been willing that accident should bring it to the knowledge of Mrs.
Richling; but the moment never came when she could voluntarily confide in
her, though she was a great deal with her that winter. She was Mrs.
Richling's lieutenant in the social affairs of the parish, which the
rector's wife took under her care. She helped her get up entertainments
of the kind that could be given in the church parlor, and they managed
together some dances which had to be exiled to the town hall. They
contrived to make the young people of the village feel that they were
having a gay time, and Clementina did not herself feel that it was a dull
one. She taught them some of the new steps and figures which the help
used to pick up from the summer folks at the Middlemount, and practise
together; she liked doing that; her mother said the child would rather
dance than eat, any time. She was never sad, but so much dignity got into
her sweetness that the rector now and then complained of feeling put down
by her.

She did not know whether she expected Gregory to write to her or not; but