"I've always wanted to meet you." Persis spoke with unabashed friendliness. "I've been interested in you for quite a spell. My name is Dale, Persis Dale."
Miss Randolph lifted her fine eyebrows, but offered no further comment on this interesting circumstance.
"Perhaps you'll remember," Persis continued briskly, "that we've had a little correspondence. At least you wrote me about a letter of yours to a Mr. Wash—"
"I remember the incident clearly," said Miss Randolph. For all her chilling air, she glanced toward the door to assure herself that they were not overheard. "It is true I wrote you," she continued with a hauteur which would have reduced a less buoyant nature to instant dumbness. "But I hardly see that this constitutes a ground for considering ourselves acquaintances."
So far from being crushed, Persis smiled. And there was something so frankly spontaneous in her look of amusement, that the young woman colored.
"Bless you, I know it wasn't a letter of introduction," Persis assured her with unimpaired good humor. "But I've always wanted to tell you that when you wrote me that time, you did a lot of good without knowing it. Love-letters seem to me like firearms. In the proper hands they're real useful, but if the wrong people get hold of 'em it's bound to make trouble. At least that was the way with the one you wrote Mr. Wash—"
For the second time Miss Randolph looked toward the door, and when next
Persis saw her eyes they were appealing rather than disdainful.
"The letter by mistake was sent to a young man who lives in Clematis," Persis continued. "His name is Thompson, and W. Thompson, at that. He thought it such a joke that he put it in his pocket for his wife to find. Didn't know 'twas loaded, you see. And when she did find it and he explained, she didn't believe him. I don't know as anybody believed him but me, but it seemed such a silly explanation for a sensible man to make up that I felt pretty sure it must be true."
Miss Randolph put down her pen and gave herself up to the business of listening.
"If I could tell you how that little woman looked," declared Persis, "it would just make your heart jump to think it was you that helped her. Only six months married, she was, too. Well, I took a risk and wrote to Mr. Thompson, Cleveland, and when I got his letter I knew everything was all right. But I wasn't sure of proving it to young Mrs. Thompson. After a woman's brooded over a thing as long as she had, with her neighbors egging her on to do something desperate, she's not going to be convinced with anything short of downright proof. But between your letter and Mr. Wash—"