Imagination and Heart, Tales for Fifteen | Page 7

some measure to the mansion. After pursuing their several occupations for some minutes with a silence that had lately been a stranger to them, the aunt observed--
"You appear to have something new in hand, my love. Surely you must abound with trimmings, and yet you are working another already?"
"It is for Anna Miller," said Julia with a flush of feeling.
"I was in hopes you would perform your promise to your cousin Katherine, now Miss Miller is gone, and make your portion of the garments for the Orphan Asylum," returned Miss Emmerson gravely.
"Oh! cousin Katherine must wait. I promised this trimming to Anna to remember me by, and I would not disappoint the dear girl for the world."
"It is not your cousin Katherine, but the Orphans, who will have to wait; and surely a promise to a relation is as sacred as one to an acquaintance."
"Acquaintance, aunt!" echoed the niece with displeasure. "Do not, I entreat you, call Anna an acquaintance merely. She is my friend--my very best friend, and I love her as such."
"Thank you, my dear," said the aunt dryly.
"Oh! I mean nothing disrespectful to yourself, dear aunt," continued Julia. "You know how much I owe to you, and ought to know that I love you as a mother."
"And would you prefer Miss Miller to a mother, then?"
"Surely not in respect, in gratitude, in obedience; but still I may love her, you know. Indeed, the feelings are so very different, that they do not at all interfere with each other--in my heart at least."
"No!" said Miss Emmerson, with a little curiosity--"I wish you would try and explain this difference to me, that I may comprehend the distinctions that you are fond of making."
"Why, nothing is easier, dear aunt!" said Julia with animation. "You I love because you are kind to me, attentive to my wants, considerate for my good; affectionate, and--and--from habit--and you are my aunt, and take care of me."
"Admirable reasons!" exclaimed Charles Weston, who had laid aside his book to listen to this conversation.
"They are forcible ones I must admit," said Miss Emmerson, smiling affectionately on her niece; "but now for the other kind of love."
"Why, Anna is my friend, you know," cried Julia, with eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "I love her, because she has feelings congenial with my own; she has so much wit, is so amusing, so frank, so like a girl of talents--so like--like every thing I admire myself."
"It is a pity that one so highly gifted cannot furnish herself with frocks," said the aunt, with a little more than her ordinary dryness of manner, "and suffer you to work for those who want them more."
"You forget it is in order to remember me," said Julia, in a manner that spoke her own ideas of the value of the gift.
"One would think such a friendship would not require any thing to remind one of its existence," returned the aunt.
"Why! it is not that she will forget me without it, but that she may have something by her to remind her of me-----" said Julia rapidly, but pausing as the contradiction struck even herself.
"I understand you perfectly, my child," interrupted the aunt, "merely as an unnecessary security, you mean."
"To make assurance doubly sure," cried Charles Weston with a laugh.
"Oh! you laugh, Mr. Weston," said Julia with a little anger; "but I have often said, you were incapable of friendship."
"Try me!" exclaimed the youth fervently. "Do not condemn me without a trial."
"How can I?" said Julia, laughing in her turn. "You are not a girl."
"Can girls then only feel friendship?" inquired Charles, taking the seat which Miss Emmerson had relinquished.
"I sometimes think so," said Julia, with her own good-humoured smile. "You are too gross--too envious--in short, you never see such friendships between men as exist between women."
"Between girls, I will readily admit," returned the youth. "But let us examine this question after the manner of the courts--"
"Nay, if you talk law I shall quit you," interrupted the young lady gaily.
"Certainly one so learned in the subject need not dread a cross-examination," cried the youth, in her own manner.
"Well, proceed," cried the lady. "I have driven aunt Margaret from the field, and you will fare no better, I can assure you."
"Men, you say, are too gross to feel a pure friendship; in the first place, please to explain yourself on this point."
"Why I mean, that your friendships are generally interested; that it requires services and good offices to support it."
{interested = not pure, having an ulterior motive}
"While that of women depends on--"
"Feeling alone."
"But what excites this feeling?" asked Charles with a smile.
"What? why sympathy--and a knowledge of each other's good qualities."
"Then you think Miss Miller has more good qualities than Katherine Emmerson," said Weston.
"When did I ever say so?" cried Julia in surprise.
"I infer it from your