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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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1114 me. What if we were to remain so true to these first impressions as to form no others? It is but one more link to the strong chain that binds us together. It seems but yesterday that we were playfellows, Kate, and it will seem but tomorrow when we are staid old people, looking back to these cares as we look back, now, to those of our childish days: and recollecting with a melancholy pleasure that the time was, when they could move us. Perhaps then, when we are quaint old folks and talk of the times when our step was lighter and our hair not grey, we may be even thankful for the trials that so endeared us to each other, and turned our lives into that current, down which we shall have glided so peacefully and calmly. And having caught some inkling of our story, the young people about us--as young as you and I are now, Kate--may come to us for sympathy, and pour distresses which hope and inexperience could scarcely feel enough for, into the compassionate ears of the old bachelor brother and his maiden sister.’ Kate smiled through her tears as Nicholas drew this picture; but they were not tears of sorrow, although they continued to fall when he had ceased to speak. ‘Am I not right, Kate?’ he said, after a short silence. ‘Quite, quite, dear brother; and I cannot tell you how happy I am that I have acted as you would have had me.’ ‘You don’t regret?’ ‘N-n-no,’ said Kate timidly, tracing some pattern upon the ground with her little foot. ‘I don’t regret having done what was honourable and right, of course; but I do regret that this should have ever happened--at least sometimes I regret it, and sometimes I--I don’t know what I say; I am but a weak girl, |
