"I don't think so. Men are not so curious." Pattie spoke with unconscious rebuke. "If he should ask, I need not say much. I think, if I were you, I should feel that I ought to tell him everything. But that is for you—not for me. I have only to speak to him about what concerns my father and me."
"I can't get that key out." Mrs. Cragg spoke curtly, yet in her voice there was a new note, a something like regret.
Pattie knelt down and worked patiently at the lock. It was a long business. For more than five minutes her efforts were in vain. Then at last the key yielded, and she handed the bunch to Mrs. Cragg. After which she stooped, and pressed her lips to the lid. Mrs. Cragg waited uneasily, longing to escape, yet hardly knowing how to do so.
"Pattie, you have behaved uncommonly nice about it," she said at length. "And—I don't mind saying that I didn't mean any harm. I thought I'd a right—and I say so still. But I didn't mean any harm."
Pattie tried to speak, and failed. Tears were running over her cheeks.
"I don't see, for my part, why you should fuss about it. I don't see that it matters. What difference can it make now—about what those letters say?"
"No difference—to you—or to any one except me. Only I know better what it meant—what he had to go through. He bore it all so patiently—never a hard word about anybody. And all the time he was accused of what he had never done. And I loved him so—I love him! It doesn't matter to you—not the very least. It does to me—more than anything in all the world."
"But—" and Mrs. Cragg came to a pause.
"I don't know how to bear it. And any time it may come out—and people will believe that he did what he never could have done."
"Only, you can't be sure—you don't really know."