Nothing would induce her to pass by him, until the schoolmistress, saying in good plain English that it was her bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming to trouble herself about either of them.
I have been led away from what I meant the portion included in these brackets to inform my readers about.

I say, then, most of the boarders had left the table about the time when I began telling some of these secrets of mine,--all of them, in fact, but the old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress.

I understand why a young woman should like to hear these simple but genuine experiences of early life, which are, as I have said, the little brown seeds of what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of azure and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I felt there must be something of nature in them which redeemed their seeming insignificance.

Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not a small store of recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of fast-returning winters,--a few such recollections, which, if you should write them all out, would be swept into some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half-hour's lazy reading to his subscribers,--and yet, if Death should cheat you of them, you would not know yourself in eternity ?] -- I made three acquaintances at a very early period of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten.

The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory was this: refusing a small favor asked of me,--nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning.