"Why, I don't want to hurry, Agatha. I must wait to be sure. There's some nice things about each one and some that aren't so nice. I'll have to think it over a while yet."
Agatha was watching the little woman keenly. "Fritz," she asked with unusual, gentle gravity, "are you sure you want either of them? Don't you think you'd be happier just to stay on with me?"
Miss Finch regarded her interrogator with evident amazement. "Why, Agatha, I might never have another chance."
This was too true to question. Agatha remained silent.
"I sometimes can't help wishing," Miss Finch owned plaintively, "that there hadn't been two. That's what makes it so puzzling—having to choose. And there seems so much to be said on both sides. But to refuse them both—why, Agatha, it would be flying in the face of Providence."
Agatha said no more. Leaving Miss Finch to her dreams, she went up to the garret to find an appropriate costume for Hephzibah in her forthcoming momentous interview. She felt she could act her rôle with more spirit if dressed appropriately to the part. Agatha did not underestimate the difficulty of her proposed masquerade. It was an easy matter to evolve a personality sufficiently consistent to deceive Warren, for Warren had never met the dignified and elderly spinster, Miss Agatha Kent. Forbes, on the contrary, had spent hours in that lady's company nearly every day through the summer, and knew every inflection of her voice. The forthcoming interview with Forbes presented any number of terrifying possibilities.
She had a word with him at a suitable interval after their late conversation. "She's coming."
"Good!" he cried triumphantly. "Did Howard go?"
"No. Miss Finch was going to see her, anyway. She'll be here at three."
"Good!" said Forbes again. He turned to her with that mingled gentleness and resolution which somehow revealed him in a new light.