The Argosy — page 212: what you’re looking at

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198 How it Happened, choir practice that evening. Fenella remonstrated against this idea with eager indignation, and the elder girl yielded at once, and con- sented to go, as if the matter were quite indifferent to her, although she had confessed to feeling weary and unequal to further effort. Fenella vexed and provoked me all that day. And yet I was un- reasonable, no doubt, in expecting her to act otherwise than as she did, considering the circumstances of the case, and her nature. She feigned extreme fatigue when we left the church, until she almost obliged Mr. Carter to offer her his arm. He only went with us halt way to the Academy, however. He turned away then, pleading urgent business as an excuse for leaving us; and after that how Fenella did chatter ! “He asked me if there could be any hope for him,” she said, breaking out into a conscious little laugh; “and I said, ‘Of course not ;’ and, would you believe it, the stupid old fellow trembled all over as the words came out! He is a goose. Instead of shivering and going away like that he ought to have settled the whole matter to-night, upon the spot.” Frances and I were walking arm in arm. She too trembled just now, and IJ, half inadvertently, caught her hand in mine, but she drew e quite away from me as I did so. “© You talk too much of things, Fenella,” she said, with a little gasp. “What is the good of things except to talk of them?” was the very characteristic answer given to this remark. Fenella came to me by herself next Saturday. Frances had been laid up ever since that evening with a feverish cold. We did not go to the choir practice. Even had I been inclined to take Fenella by herself, she would not have cared much to go, as Louis Carter was absent on bank business, and had deputed his duties to an assistant. I went back with her in the evening to the school, to see Frances. She was up and downstairs again, but she still looked ill. Her tace was white and pinched, her hands burned painfully. When I touched her lips they, too, felt unnaturally hot, but she called herself nearly well. ‘IT shall be quite ready to go to you and to the choir practice next week,” she whispered. ‘‘ Fenella tells me I mope, and that this attracts notice, but indeed I don’t wish to do so. I would not interfere with her happiness for the whole world.” III. The boys were unusually tardy about dispersing on the following Saturday. The weather was mild, dull, and spring-like, and they were intending to go off upon some fishing excursion. Their prepara- tions for this were very elaborate and noisy. I grew weary,-at last, comicbooks.com