"I should simply tell him the story which you told me."
"He might show the letter to father and mother, who are anxious—oh! much more anxious than you fancy—to marry me to Sidney."
"They know his value, Harriet."
"And then it will all come at once to trouble them, instead of breaking it by degrees. Well, it's my fate. I must not keep it from them."
"No. How much have you written?"
"'Dear Sidney'—and—and the day of the month, of course. Oh! dear—here he is!"
Away went paper and pens into the desk again, and the desk cleared from the table, and turned topsy-turvy on to a chair.
"Oh! the top of the ink-stand's out—look here!—oh! what a mess there'll be!" cried Mattie.
Harriet reversed the desk.
"Perhaps it's not all spilt—I'm very sorry to have made such a mess of it, and—and it's only Sidney's father, after all. Don't tell him I'm here."