Her face fell.
"Please, Miss," she said, "I was thinking ... perhaps you would write the letter for me."
"No, Susan," I replied promptly, "I can't do that. If talking it over will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out in pencil. But I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had one letter in my handwriting. I wouldn't have had it happen for the world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long, so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of explaining to him why the other handwriting was different."
While I was speaking, Susan was becoming more and more agitated; and when I ceased, she didn't answer.
"Come, Susan," I said kindly.
She began to weep.
"Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think----"
She stopped.
"Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough.
"I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw my writing, he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----"