Tippy came in soon after Richard left and sat down at the secretary.
“I’ve been thinking I ought to write to your mother and let her know about yesterday’s performance before she has a chance to hear it from outsiders or the papers. It’s a whole week to-day since she left.”
“A week,” echoed Georgina. “Is that all? It seems a month at least. It’s been so long.”
Mrs. Triplett tossed her a calendar from the desk.
“Count it up for yourself,” she said. “She left two days before your birthday and this is the Wednesday after.”
While Mrs. Triplett began her letter Georgina studied the calendar, putting her finger on a date as she recalled the various happenings of it. Each day had been long and full. That one afternoon when she and Richard found the paper in the rifle seemed an age in itself. It seemed months since they had promised Belle and Uncle Darcy to keep the secret.
She glanced up, about to say so, then bit her tongue, startled at having so nearly betrayed the fact of their having a secret. Then the thought came to her that Emmett’s sin had found him out in as strange a way as that of the man who talked in his sleep or the chicken thief to whom the feather clung. It was one more proof added to the forty in Aunt Letty’s book. Richard’s positiveness made a deeper impression on her than she liked to acknowledge. She shut her eyes a moment, squinting them up so tight that her eyelids wrinkled, and hoped as hard as she could hope that everything would turn out all right.
“What on earth is the matter with you, child?” exclaimed Tippy, looking up from her letter in time to catch Georgina with her face thus screwed into wrinkles.
Georgina opened her eyes with a start.
“Nothing,” was the embarrassed answer. “I was just thinking.”