Angela shut the door behind her and lighted a flaring gasjet. Then she stood still, knitting her brows slightly, glancing about. She wanted writing-paper, and didn't know where to put her hands on any, exactly.
In the sharp light of the gas it was now seen that Angela's little bedroom lacked Beauty, of the purely objective sort: Beauty of that kind depending, as all know, on fathers being good providers, which was not the case here, alas. Everything in Angela's room was cheap when it was new, and everything was far from new now. A very large old walnut wardrobe occupied all one side of the room, awkwardly substituting for a clothes-closet. The bed was of yellow imitation-oak, and sagged considerably in the middle from worn-out springs. The bureau was to match; its somewhat wavy mirror was the nearest Angela came to a dressing-table; its three drawers would never quite shut, and frequently wouldn't quite open. There were also two chairs in the bedroom, one straight, one a re-seated rocker, and a small walnut work-table, which trembled dangerously if you brushed against it.
Nor was the room specially spruce, at the moment at least, people's tastes differing in these matters, even in the same family. Angela's young brother, for example, kept his small room shining like a new pin, and let himself personally go till he was a disgrace to the family. Angela, on the other hand, whose exquisite personal neatness had attracted the notice of Charles Garrott himself, was more or less indifferent about a room which nobody but the family ever saw. The door of the wardrobe stood open now, with one of the yellow bureau-drawers; a pair of shoes rested on the straight chair, with a pair of stockings curled on the rag-carpet below. On the sway-backed bed were strewn various things—a towel, two old summer dresses that she had been trying on a little earlier in the afternoon, a pair of soiled white gloves, a paper of pins and two new dress-shields.
In the drawer of the wardrobe, Angela presently found several sheets of note-paper, and, after a longer search, a single envelope. The envelope was not what it had been once. It had knocked about the world a bit in its time; its bright youth was gone. Upon its face was a dusky smudge, souvenir of some forgotten encounter, and, near the smudge, some hand had once written the word "Mrs.," and then lost heart and abandoned the whole enterprise. Still, it was possibly the only envelope in the house. Angela found, after due trial, that the smudge yielded, quite satisfactorily, to the eraser on the end of a pencil. As for the reminiscent "Mrs.," that was easily enough worked over into a "Mr.," though not, to be sure, without a slight blot.
Angela sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the rickety work-table into position before her. Having addressed the remainder of the envelope, after the "Mr.," she sat biting the penholder for a space. But when the business end of the pen was put into action, it went ahead quite steadily:—
Dear Mr. Garrott [wrote Angela from the bedside]:—
When you left here the other night, I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again!
I have been very sorry about our misunderstanding—and I have felt that I should not have said what I did. I have thought it all over, and I understand better now.
When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me—and I will explain just what I mean. I couldn't that night.
Yours most cordially,
Angela Flower.
She had hardly written the final letter of her pretty name when the front door was heard to open again, this time with a bang. Having hastily tucked the note into the experienced envelope, Angela got downstairs before her little brother, Wallie, had finished taking off his dripping overcoat.
Wallie was quite the queerest, gravest boy Angela had ever known. In her whole life, she had never seen him laugh but once. That was one summer day in Mitchellton, when she, having undertaken to paper the walls of her room, had fallen backward off the stepladder into a bucket of paste. Wallie was an eccentric, undoubtedly. Still, he was admitted to be obliging enough about little things. Now he made no special objections to going for the sugar; and when Angela then asked him please to step by at the same time, and give the note to Mr. Garrott, he only said, with one of his absent stares: "Step by? That's six blocks further."
"Well, I haven't anybody else to take it for me, Wallie," said Angela, in a voice rather like her mother's.
"And, Wallie," she added, presently, "I'm not sure whether there'll be an answer or not. You'd better just ask him, that's the best way. Just say, after he's read it, 'Is there any answer?'"