Three days later Bradwell had me in his room and told me the end of it all, which shows that a girl never does what you might exspect.
“As a lesson to you, young Watson,” said Bradwell, “I may tell you that my career has been utterly blighted and my life ruined by that business of the sonnit.”
I said I was sorry to hear it.
He said:
“Yes, blighted; and so’s his--I mean Browne’s. She got my letter that night and his next morning. That night she felt all her old feeling for me return because of the sonnit, thinking I’d done it. Then, next morning, she got just the very same stuff to a word from Browne, with a letter saying he had burned the midnight oil to compose it. Well, there you are. What does she do? Insted of accepting my statement, being the first, she argues in a most elaborate way that I couldn’t possibly have coppied from Browne, and Browne couldn’t possibly have copied from me. But it would have been to much of a coinsidence if we’d both written exsaxtly the same sonnit out of our own heads, so what does she conklude?”
I said I didn’t know.
“Why, fathead, that we both coppied it from somebody else--out of some book by some well-known proper dead poet. I’ve no doubt now, on thinking over it, that Browne did do that; because when I first read his poem I could hardly believe that he had written such real poetry, owing to the rimes and smoothness. But it’s all over now. She’s written a letter I can’t show you. To hope even for her friendship wouldn’t be any good. A girl hates a joke something frightful.”
“How about Browne?” I said.
“She’s written to him also, asking him where he got the verses out of, and exsplaining she doesn’t believe they are original, and saying how another acquaintance of hers had sent the very same lot the day before. So now you see what a sinful mess you’ve made of it.”
I said I did, but I felt it was my duty to him.