She came quickly up to me, blushing, and took my hand, saying: "Dear David, the clerk knows everything; he has given us leave to say good-bye here." "Yes, children, I have," said the clerk, "but only for a few moments, because Susanna begged so hard for it, and also that you may both hear my opinion of the whole thing after thinking it over." He now made a little speech, in which he said that he did not see anything very wrong in our loving one another, although we were indeed absurdly young.

He hoped, too--and he had thought a great deal about it--that our not revealing our engagement to our parents was excusable, as they would scarcely even look at the matter as really serious, and we might feel hurt.

He did not intend to be a receiver of secret love-letters, as Susanna had asked him, and that both for his own sake and for ours, because we ought to use the approaching two years of trial to see if there really were any truth in our love, or if it were only a childish fancy of the kind that afterwards evaporates.
With these words the old clerk good-naturedly left the room.
When we were alone, Susanna told me in a whisper why she had ventured to confide in the clerk.

She had heard at home that in his youth he had once been disappointed in love, and that that was the reason why he had never married, and had become so strange.

Then in eager haste she drew out of her pocket--she still wore her old, short, blue-checked, every-day dress, but her hair "in grown-up fashion"-- a cross of small, blue beads.