"Certainly," said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been running a long distance. "I was keeping it for your mother."
"Well, I'm damned," said Johnny. "I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...but I never heard such a thing. Does my mother pay a larger subscription than other people?"
"Certainly not."
"Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?"
Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears--also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. She had recourse to her only defence.
"If I have misunderstood my duty," she said in a trembling voice, "there is the Library Committee."
"Oh, never mind," said Joan whose anger had disappeared. "It doesn't matter a bit. We'll have the book after Lady St. Leath."
"Indeed you won't," said Johnny, seizing the volume and forcing it upon Joan. "Mother can wait. I never heard of such a thing." He turned fiercely upon Miss Milton. "My mother shall know exactly what has happened. I'm sure she'd be horrified if she understood that you were keeping books from other subscribers in order that she might have them.... Good afternoon."
He strode from the room. At the door he paused.
"Can I--Shall we--Are you going down the High Street, Miss Brandon?"