"But," repeated the postmaster, suggestively; and Dorothy finished her sentence:
"I haven't talked a single word to anybody else, and it seems so good to do it now. I never had a secret—secrets, for I've got another one yet, that I can't tell—before and I don't like them. I beg your pardon, and—May I have my father's position?" said Dorothy, rising, and seeing by the big clock on the wall that she had long overstayed the time allotted for this interview.
The gentleman also rose, and laid his hand kindly upon her shoulder, but his face and voice were grave, as he answered:
"No, my dear, I am sorry to disappoint you, but you ask the impossible. You could not—But there's no use in details of explanation. As your wise father has taught you, business should be reduced to its simplest terms. I cannot give you the place, but I can, and do, give you the best of advice—for one of your imaginative nature. Never cherish secrets! Never, even such delightful, surprising ones, as this of yours has been. Especially, never keep anything from your mother. When anything comes into your mind which you feel you cannot tell her banish the idea at once and you'll stay on the safe side of things. Good-morning."
Other people were entering the private office and Dorothy was being courteously bowed out of it, before she fully realized that she had not obtained her desire, and never would. For a few seconds, her temper flamed, and she reflected, tartly:
"Huh! I should make as good a postman as lots of them do. My father says some of them are too ignorant for their places. I'm not ignorant. I'm the best scholar in my class, and my class is the highest one in our Primary. I could do it. I could so. But—Well, he was real nice. He acted just as if he had little girls of his own and knew just how they felt. He laughed at me, but he didn't laugh hateful, like Miss Georgia does on her 'nervous days' when she mixes me all up in my lessons. And anyhow, maybe it's just as well. If I'd got to be a letter-girl I couldn't have gone to the country with father and mother, and I should have about died of lonesomeness without them. Maybe Mrs. Bruce wouldn't have had me, nor the minister's folks either. Anyway, I've got that other, more splendid secret, still. I have to have that, because I have it already, and so can't help. Miss Georgia would say that there were two too many 'haves' in that sentence, and the 'two too' sounds funny, too. Now I must go home. I've got my money-letter all right and, after all, I'm glad mother Martha doesn't know that I wanted father's beat, she'd be so much disappointed to know how near we came to staying here and couldn't."
With which philosophic acceptance of facts and a cheerful looking forward to the "next thing," the rejected seeker after public office ran up the hill leading from the post-office and straight against another opportunity, as it were.
Just as she had signalled a car, the "gentleman" who had twice called upon her and who had told her that his name was "John Smith," appeared beside her on the sidewalk, raised his hat, and with an engaging air exclaimed:
"Why, Miss Chester, how fortunate! I was just on the point of going to see you. Now, if you will go with me, instead, it will save time and answer just as well. We don't take this car, but another. My office is on Howard Street, and we'll walk till we meet a Linden Avenue car. This way, please. Allow me?"
But Dorothy shrank back from this overly pleasant man. It was with the same feeling of repulsion that she had experienced on each of their previous meetings, and which she had tried to conquer because of the great benefit he claimed he had sought her to bestow upon her.