"Well, if I must—"
It seemed impossible to go on. Even the thought of how good he was and how he had taken up my burden when it was too heavy for my own strength made it harder to face the horrible business.
"—I owe ten dollars to Kitty Reid, and about twenty-five to Cadge," I admitted. "I didn't mean to borrow of them, but I had to do it, just lately—"
"Poor child!" said John, stroking my hand with his big, warm paw, as he would a baby's. "Poor child!"
"I've bills somewhere for everything else—"
It was like digging among the ruins of my past greatness to pull out the crumpled papers from my writing desk, reminding me of the gay scenes that for me were no more; but John quietly took them from me, and began smoothing them and laying them in methodical piles and making notes of amounts and names.
"I've refused all these to Uncle Timothy; he's been worrying me with questions—" I said desperately.
"Three florists, two confectioners," he enumerated, as if he had not heard me.
"—Women eat sweets by the ton, but lately there have been few of 'em in this house. Then here are the accounts for newspaper clippings, you know; Shanks and Romeike; but they're trifles."
"You must have been a good customer," John said, glancing about the dishevelled flat—I hadn't had the heart to rearrange it since Mrs. Whitney left. "From the look of the place, I believe you would have bought a mummy or a heathen god, if anybody had suggested it to you."