"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."
"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 loving her better, merely," returned the young man with a little of Miss Emmerson's dryness.
"It would be difficult to compare them," said Julia after a moment's pause. "Katherine is in the world, and has had an opportunity of showing her merit; that Anna has never enjoyed. Katherine is certainly a most excellent girl, and I like her very much; but there is no reason to think that Anna will not prove as fine a young woman as Katherine, when put to the trial."
"Pray," said the young lawyer with great gravity, "how many of these bosom, these confidential friends can a young woman have at the same time?"
"One, only one--any more than she could have two lovers," cried Julia quickly.
"Why then did you find it necessary to take that one from a set, that was untried in the practice of well-doing, when so excellent a subject as your cousin Katherine offered?"