"Begin what, Agatha?"
"Why, say what I've just told you, that Mr. Forbes wants to see me this afternoon."
Miss Finch groaned and shook her head. "Oh, Agatha, it seems so wicked."
"Wicked! If that's not unreasonable. Here I am taking all the pains to come up-stairs to you, to have you give me the message so I won't need to stretch the truth the least little bit, and then you talk as if I were an ordinary prevaricator, without a conscience."
Miss Finch quailed before Agatha's simulated indignation. "Oh, if you look at it that way," she replied feebly and made an effort to recall the message. "Hephzibah, Mr. Forbes wants to see you to-day."
"Tell me it's very important," prompted Agatha.
"It's very important," Miss Finch repeated, and looked on the point of bursting into tears.
"I'll be there at three o'clock," replied Agatha in the person of Hephzibah. Then her gaze fell on the letters lying open on the table and she temporarily forgot her own perplexities in the perennial feminine interest in a love-affair.
"Oh, Fritz," she exclaimed, coming closer. "You're writing the letter, aren't you? Which one is it to be?"