Miss Billington (as before, but with clenched hands and set lips).—“That is neither one of those girls. They haven’t got the sand. Whoever it is, that settles it.” She flung open the door and swept into the room.
“Jack,” she said, “if I did talk any such ridiculous, absurd, contemptible, utterly despicable nonsense, I don’t choose to have it repeated. Mama, dear, you know we can see a great deal of each other if you can only make Papa come and spend the Summer here by the sea, and we go down to Los Brazos for part of the Winter.”
* * *
That evening Miss Carmelita Billington asked her Spanish maid if she had dropped the letter addressed to Mr. Hatterly in the letter-box. The Spanish maid went through a pleasing dramatic performance, in which she first assured her mistress that she had; then became aware of a sudden doubt; hunted through six or eight pockets which were not in her dress, and then produced the crumpled envelope unopened. She begged ten thousand pardons; she cursed herself and the day she was born, and her incapable memory; and expressed a willingness to drown herself, which might have been more terrifying had she ever before displayed any willingness to enter into intimate relations with water.
Miss Billington treated her with unusual indulgence.
“It’s all right, Concha,” she said; “it didn’t matter in the least, only Mr. Hatterly told me that he had never received it, and so I thought I’d ask you.”
Then, as the girl was leaving the room, Carmelita called her back, moved by a sudden impulse.
“Oh, Concha!” she said; “you wanted one of those shell breast-pins, didn’t you Here, take this and buy yourself one!” and she held out a dollar-bill.
When she reached her own room, Concha put the dollar-bill in a gayly-painted little box on top of a new five-dollar bill, and hid them both under her prayer-book.
