She replied tartly, "Yes, stupid old visitors and parents!"
"Excuse me!" he wrote; "I meant politicians."
She replied in the same spirit as before, "I think politicians are divine!"
Duff Salter looked a little wondering out of those calm gray eyes and his strong, yet benevolent Scotch-Irish countenance. Podge, who now talked freely with Agnes in his presence, said confidently:
"I believe I can tantalize this good old granny by giving him doubts about me! I am real bad, Aggy; you know that! It is no story to tell it!"
"Oh! we are both bad enough to try to improve," exclaimed Agnes absently.
"Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter.
He came down every evening, and began respectfully to bow to Agnes and to smile on Podge, and then stretched his feet out to the ottoman, drew his tablets up to the small table and proceeded to write. They hallooed into his ear once or twice, but he said he was deaf as a mill-stone, and might be cursed to his face and wouldn't understand it. They had formed a pleasing opinion of him, not unmixed with curiosity, when one night he wrote on the back of a piece of paper:
"Have you any idea who wrote this anonymous note to me?"
Podge Byerly took the note and found in a woman's handwriting these words: