“It’s no use telling you, because it doesn’t matter. That is, it doesn’t matter now. Everything’s—arranged.”
“We’ll talk about that later. I want to know what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.”
“They didn’t get it exactly. They were only beginning to get it when I made them understand that I was going back to be—Oh, why do you make me talk about it? Why do you bring it all up now, when it can’t do any good?”
To get at the facts I was obliged to speak with the severity one uses toward a difficult child.
“I want you to tell me what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.”
“Isn’t it perfectly evident what idea they’d get? Any one would get it when you—when you never said a word—not the least, little, confidential word—and you so ill!—and blind!—and to your own sisters!—and that Miss Farley there!”
I passed over the reference to Miss Farley because I couldn’t see what it meant. I had enough to do in seizing the new suggestion that had come to me.
“They didn’t think—they couldn’t have thought—that there was nothing on my side.”
“And everything on mine. That’s precisely the inference they drew. Girls do go about, you know, giving people to understand that men—”
“But not girls like you.”