"O," replied Mary, "I love to have you with me."

She was prevented from saying more, for Alice now called out, "Forward,
march! Do you hear the drum?"

"It is not probable," said Fanny, "that a _religious_ person like Mary
Palmer will march to the tune of Yankee Doodle upon a kettle-drum."

Emma looked at Mary, and saw the deep blush upon her face, and the tear
that, in spite of herself, trembled in her mild blue eye.

"How unkind," thought Emma, "and so _rude_ too! This plain-spoken girl
has not a good heart, if people do think so. I shall ask Dora about
her."

"It is the signal for dinner," said Mary, recovering herself in a
minute, and turning with a smile toward Emma. "Henry wants us to go to
the wagons." So they walked along arm-in-arm, while Alice and Fanny
whispered together about this sudden intimacy, and prophesied that hot
love like that would soon be cold.

"I mean to tell Mary just what I think of it," said Fanny; "for I am
not afraid to speak my mind to anybody."

"Well," replied Alice, "I cannot imagine what Miss Emma likes in Mary,
or why Mary is so charmed with her. This much I will say, but don't you
name it to any one--neither of them is at all to _my_ fancy."

It was not wonderful that Alice did not know the secret of that