Wint exclaimed angrily: “You’re crazy, Peter. Or you’re.... Look here, did Amos send you?”
“No.”
“Is this some damned trick of his?”
“No.”
“Well, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
Gergue said thoughtfully: “I’ve said all I know. Think it over, Wint.”
He went out, with a surprising quickness, and was gone before Wint could frame other questions. The young man was left to consider the thing.
When Wint went home for supper, he was still mystified; but he was beginning to grow angry. Angry at the mere suggestion that lay behind Peter’s words. Angry at Gergue for saying them. And this anger was a more hopeful sign than his depression of the morning had been. He was fiercely resentful at Hardiston, at the whole world.
He met Joan, halfway home. That is to say, he overtook her on her way, and they walked home together. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not see there was something troubling the girl until she spoke of it. She said: “Wint, I met Agnes Caretall uptown.”
He nodded, scarce hearing; and Joan said: “She’s a good deal of a gossip, you know.”