"A baby like her! As if it mattered!"
"But it does matter—very much. Promise me that Dot shall never hear about this."
Mrs. Cragg broke into a laugh.
"And you are not sorry! You do not mind! Not in the very least."
There was a short silence. Mrs. Cragg had some ado to keep up her hardness before that grieved face.
"It's all your fault," she said at length. "You've been past everything with your fancies, not telling anything I'd a right to know, and pretending you couldn't read the letters. As if everybody didn't read other people's letters when they're dead! And so of course I thought I'd see for myself. There was no reason why I shouldn't. Mr. Cragg and I are giving you a home, and we have a right to know about you."
"Not to find it out in that way," said Pattie gravely. "And it was no pretending. I have thought it wrong to read the letters. Other people thinking differently did not make it right for me. I could not do what I felt to be wrong."
[CHAPTER XII]
Those Three Letters
Pattie pointed to the keys hanging from the japanned tin box.