“Oh, well, I—I cry easily sometimes.” With hands that shook visibly, she folded the letter and tucked it into its envelope. Then with a carelessness that was a little too elaborate, she tossed it into her open desk. Very plainly, whatever she had meant to do in the first place, she did not now intend to disclose to Mr. Smith the contents of that letter.
“Miss Maggie, please tell me—was it bad news?”
“Bad? Why, of course not!” She laughed gayly.
Mr. Smith thought he detected a break very like a sob in the laugh.
“But maybe I could—help you,” he pleaded.
She shook her head.
“You couldn’t—indeed, you couldn’t!”
“Miss Maggie, was it—money matters?”
He had his answer in the telltale color that flamed instantly into her face—but her lips said:—
“It was—nothing—I mean, it was nothing that need concern you.” She hurried away then to the kitchen, and Mr. Smith was left alone to fume up and down the room and frown savagely at the offending envelope tip-tilted against the ink bottle in Miss Maggie’s desk, just as Miss Maggie’s carefully careless hand had thrown it.