She passed three triangular notes to him half unwillingly, and he took them, glanced at the handwritings, and then tore them across without opening them.
“No lady worth a second thought would address a man like that,” he said sharply. “Where shall I throw this stuff?”
Miss Clode stooped down and lifted a waste-paper basket from behind the counter, and he threw the scraps in.
“We are old friends, Miss Clode,” he said. “Burn them for me, please, at once. I should not like to be so dishonourable as to disgrace the writers by letting them be seen.”
“People are talking about you so, sir.”
“About me?” he cried.
“Yes, Mr Linnell; they say you behaved like a hero.”
“Absurd!”
“When you swam out to the pony carriage and helped to rescue those—er—ladies.”
“My dear Miss Clode, would not any fisherman on the beach have done the same if he had been near? I wish people would not talk such nonsense.”