The Charm School
"There was nothing of that kind with Elise."
"Oh no, but then Elise is very different."
That was the way it seemed to Austin.
The next day the first of her notes arrived, it was written in a careful, clear hand, and no one could have missed a word:
Dear Mr. Bevans,— You told me to write about anything that struck me—did you see the moon last night? It came up suddenly out of a black cloud with silver edges. I watched it a very long time as it shone down upon your cottage, and I hoped you were not missing such a very lovely sight.
Yours
Now it struck Austin as a strange coincidence that he had observed the moon—the very lovely sight—and had felt, as he could not help suspecting the writer of that letter had felt, that it was a pity to view so much beauty without a sympathetic companion. This, however, was not the comment he wrote upon the letter, which, after deliberation, he did not submit to the writing-master's criticism. He did his own criticizing. He was extremely conscientious about it.
"This is much better as to writing than I was led to suppose," he wrote, "though
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