"Here's just room enough," pointing to a vacant spot upon the paper.

"He's always asking about you, and you can answer his questions yourself." "I'll do it," said Jenny, and seizing the pen, she thoughtlessly scribbled off a ludicrous account of her failure, and of the blunders she was constantly committing, while she spoke of Mary as the pattern for the whole school, both in scholarship and behavior.
"There!" said she, wiping her gold pen upon her silk apron (for Jenny still retained some of the habits of her childhood) "I guess he'll think I'm crazy, but I hope he'll answer it, any way." Mary hoped so too, and when at last Billy's letter came, containing a neatly written note for Jenny, it was difficult telling which of the two girls was the happier.
Soon after Mary went to Mount Holyoke, she had received a letter from Billy, in which he expressed his pleasure that she was at school, but added that the fact of her being there interfered greatly with his plan of educating her himself.

"Mother's ill health," said he, "prevented me from doing any thing until now, and just as I am in a fair way to accomplish my object, some one else has stepped in before me.

But it is all right, and as you do not seem to need my services at present, I shall next week leave Mr.Selden's employment, go into Mr.
Worthington's law office as clerk, hoping that when the proper time arrives, I shall not be defeated in another plan which was formed in boyhood, and which has become the great object of my life." Mary felt perplexed and troubled.

Billy's letters of late had been more like those of a lover than a brother, and she could not help guessing the nature of "the plan formed in boyhood." She knew she should never love him except with a sister's love, and though she could not tell him so, her next letter lacked the tone of affection with which she was accustomed to write, and on the whole a rather formal affair.