He was right, for when I went to clear the things away Mr. Saxon was walking up and down the room in a dreadful rage, and the perspiration was streaming down his face.
“The wretches, the fiends!” he said, “to dare to say this to me! The scoundrels! but I’ll teach them a lesson; I’ll tell them what I think of them.”
And directly the cloth was off he seized the pen and ink and began writing page after page on letter-paper, and then tearing it up and groaning, and then beginning again.
“There!” he said, “that’s the sort of thing to say to wretches like that. Take that to the post at once.”
The Swedish gentleman took it and put it in his pocket, and went outside the door.
I followed him with the crumb-brush, and I said, “Shall I send the boy to the post with it, sir?”
He said, “Oh no; it’s all right. I sha’n’t post it at all.”
“What!” I said; “not post it?”
“No, bless you; if I were to post all the letters he writes to people when he’s in a rage he wouldn’t have a friend left in the world. I burn them instead. Why, when he’s put out like he is now he writes the most awful things to people. They don’t understand him, and might think he meant it; but I do understand him, and I don’t post the letters.”
“But don’t you tell him?”