If it's best in the future--but
surely I've a right to my freedom for a long time yet. Tell me, do you
think I'm unnatural?"
"No, Amy," he answered, gently. "It is because you are so perfectly
natural, so true to your girlhood, that you feel as you do. In that
little parable of the rose you explain yourself fully. You have no cause
for self-reproach, nor has Burt for complaint. Will you do what I ask?"
"Yes, Webb. You say you do not understand me, and yet always prove that
you do. If Burt would only treat me as you do, I should be perfectly
happy."
"Well, Burt's good-hearted, but sometimes he mislays his judgment," said
Webb, laughing. "Come, cheer up. There is no occasion for any high
tragedy on his part or for grieving on yours. You go and tell mother all
about it, and just how you feel. She is the right one to manage this
affair, and her influence over Burt is almost unbounded. Do this, and,
take my word for it, all will soon be serene."
And so it proved. Amy felt that night what it is to have a mother's
boundless love and sympathy, and she went to her rest comforted, soothed,
and more assured as to the future than she had been for a long time. "How
quiet and sensible Webb was about it all!" was her last smiling thought
before she slept. His thought as he strolled away in the moonlight after
she left him was, "It is just as if I half believed. She has the mind of
a woman, but the heart of a child.
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