Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"If it were not for you," he said; "if I didn't have faith in your being the honest little woman I took you for; if I didn't believe you spoke the truth when you said you liked me as honestly as I liked you,—though the Lord knows there is no proof except that I do believe you in spite of everything,—I'd have the thing spread the length and breadth of the land by to-morrow morning, and there would be such an uproar as the country has not seen for a year or so."

"Wait!" said Bertha, half-starting from her seat. "I did not understand before. This is too much shame. I thought it was—only a letter. I did not know"—

He went to the fire.

"I believe that, too," he said, grimly; "but it is not a little thing I'm doing. I'm denying myself a great deal. I'd give five years of my life"—He straightened out his short, stout arm and closed hand with a robust gesture, and then checked himself. "You don't know what is in it. I don't know. I have not looked at it. There it goes." And he tossed it into the fire.

"The biggest fool of all," he said, "is the fool who takes every man for a knave. Do they think a country like this has been run for a century by liars and thieves? There have been liars and thieves enough, but not enough to bring it to a stand-still, and that seems to argue that there has been an honest man or so to keep a hand on their throats. When there are none left—well, it won't be as safe to belong to the nation as it is to-day, in spite of all that's bad in it."

The envelope had flamed up, and then died down into tindery blackness. He pointed to it.

"You can say it is there," he said, "and that I didn't open it, and they may thank you for it. Now I am going."

Bertha rose. She put her hand on the mantel again.

"If I do not thank you as I ought," she said, brokenly, "you must forgive me. I see all that you have spared me, but—I have had a heavy blow." He paused to look at her, rubbing his upright hair for the last time, his little eyes twinkling with a suspicious brightness, which had its softness too. He came back and took her hand, and held it in an awkward, kindly clasp.

"You are a good little woman," he said. "I'll say it to you again. You were not cut out to be made anything else of. You won't be anything else. You are young to be disappointed and unhappy. I know all that, and there doesn't seem much to say. Advice wouldn't amount to much, and I don't know that there is any to give."