Ellen was as yet too young, and too confident in love, to have new affections plunge her into anything but a delightful sort of anti-blossom tumult. There was no suspense, no doubt, no jealousy, only utter acquiescence of single-heartedness, admiration, and trust. She thought Abby Atkins and Floretta Vining lovely and dependable; she parted from them at night without a pang, and looked forward blissfully to the meeting next morning. She also had sentiments equally peaceful and pronounced, though instinctively more secret, towards Granville Joy. She used to glance over towards the boys' side and meet his side-long eyes without so much a quickening of her pulses as a quickening of her imagination.
"I know who your beau is," Floretta Vining, who was in advance of her years, said to her once, and Ellen looked at her with half-stupid wonder.
"His first name begins with a G and his last with a J," Floretta tittered, and Ellen continued to look at her with the faintest suspicion of a blush, because she had a feminine instinct that a blush was in order, not because she knew of any reason for it.
"He is," said Floretta, with another exceedingly foolish giggle. "My, you are as red as a beet."
"I ain't old enough to have a beau," Ellen said, her soft cheeks becoming redder, and her baby face all in a tremor.
"Yes, you be," Floretta said, with authority, "because you are so pretty, and have got such pretty curls. Ben Simonds said the other day you were the prettiest girl in school."
"Then do you think he is my beau, too?" asked Ellen, innocently. But Floretta frowned, and tittered, and hesitated.
"He said except one," she faltered out, finally.
"How do I know?" pouted Floretta. "Mebbe it was me, though I don't think I'm so very pretty."
"Then Ben Simonds is your beau," said Ellen, reflectively.
That night, amid much wonder and tender ridicule, Ellen told her mother and Aunt Eva, and her father, that Ben Simonds was Floretta's beau, and Granville Joy was hers. But Andrew laughed doubtfully.
"I don't want that little thing to get such ideas into her head yet a while," he told Fanny afterwards, but she only laughed at him, seeing nothing but the childish play of the thing; but he, being a man, saw deeper.