“It takes these youngsters to rush in and raise the devil where there’s no necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of common sense had been used,” growled Peter.
He mulled over the problem for several days, and then he decided he should see Linda, and with his first look into her straightforward eyes, from the tones of her voice and the carriage of her head he would know whether the annoyance persisted. About the customary time for her to return from school Peter started on foot down the short cut between his home and the Strong residence. He was following a footpath rounding the base of the mountain, crossing and recrossing the enthusiastic mountain stream as it speeded toward the valley, when a flash of colour on the farther side of the brook attracted him. He stopped, then hastily sprang across the water, climbed a few yards, and, after skirting a heavy clump of bushes, looked at Linda sitting beside them—a most astonishing Linda, appearing small and humble, very much tucked away, unrestrained tears rolling down her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded in one hand, a packet of letters in her lap. A long instant they studied each other.
“Am I intruding?” inquired Peter at last.
Linda shook her head vigorously and gulped down a sob.
“No, Peter,” she sobbed, “I had come this far on my way to you when my courage gave out.”
Peter re-arranged the immediate landscape and seated himself beside Linda.
“Now stop distressing yourself,” he said authoritatively. “You youngsters do take life so seriously. The only thing that could have happened to you worth your shedding a tear over can’t possibly have happened; so stop this waste of good material. Tears are very precious things, Linda. They ought to be the most unusual things in life. Now tell me something. Were you coming to me about that matter that worried you the other evening?”
Linda shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I have turned that matter over where it belongs. I have nothing further to do with it. I’ll confess to you I took a paper from among those that fell from Henry Anderson’s pocket. It was not his. He had no right to have it. He couldn’t possibly have come by it honourably or without knowing what it was. I took the liberty to put it where it belongs, or at least where it seemed to me that it belongs. That is all over.”
“Then something else has happened?” asked Peter. “Something connected with the package of letters in your lap?”