"P'ease do let me," entreated the little voice.
"No, dear. Dot must be good and run away." Pattie came back, shut the door, and stood looking at Mrs. Cragg, her face full of wonderment. The cupboard door was open, the cardboard boxes were displaced, the bunch of keys hung from the lock of the open and empty tin box.
"You needn't have been at all that bother and fuss—sending Dot away. It don't matter. I don't care who knows," declared Mrs. Cragg hardily, while unable to meet Pattie's gaze. "I told you I'd a right, and so I have. If you don't choose to tell me things, I've got to find them out for myself, that's all. And I mean to do it. I shall do it again next time there's something I ought to know. I've a right, and I mean to do it. It don't matter Dot nor anybody knowing."
"I'm so sorry—oh, so sorry!" murmured Pattie. Tears filled her eyes. "I didn't think you could."
"You took mighty good care to empty the box, anyway. I s'pose you thought you'd make sure I shouldn't find out your secrets. But I've been one too many for you."
"I did not empty the box because of that—because I ever could have dreamt that you would look." Pattie spoke with difficulty. "How could I think of such a thing? Mr. Cragg was speaking to me about the letters a day or two ago. He said I might feel free to read them all, and he advised me to do it. He said he thought I ought. And I could not feel as he did. How could I know what my father would like? I was afraid of being made in the end to do what Mr. Cragg wished—and what I could not feel to be right. And so—I took all the letters out, and— I burnt them. I took them into the kitchen, and put them into the stove."
"Then you're a greater fool than I thought you even!" Mrs. Cragg replied roughly. "Why, there might be money—there might be something written to yourself."
"No. Mr. Cragg said that too, and I looked through all the packets carefully—not reading, but just seeing the names and dates. There was no money anywhere, and there were no papers for me. None at all. All of them were letters to my father, and most were quite old—written a great many years ago. They were not meant for me to see. And you— you would have read them!" Pattie said this in a tone of unbelieving amazement. "You would have read them! You couldn't, surely, have meant to do that!"
A faint sense of shame kept Mrs. Cragg silent. Pattie came a step nearer.
"If Dot had seen—only think, if little Dot had seen!" she said. "Dot—who ought only to know you as true! Think—if she had known!"