“Go, then, and look for it,” said Hattie. “But remember, Miss Scrimp, if you are not here with the letter in just ten minutes, I will wait no longer. I will not have my letters tampered with when the law protects me in my rights.”
“I’ll find—I’m sure I’ll find it,” gasped the trembling spinster, and she tottered to the door and went down stairs, shaking from head to foot, leaving the door open in her haste.
“May I come in just one second?” asked Little Jessie, who now showed herself at the door, with her cake, half gone, in her hand.
“No, dear, not till I am through with her,” said Hattie. “I don’t want her to see you, or ever know how I found my letter, if I can help it.”
“Oh, wasn’t it fun to see her turn white and green and shake all over?” said Jessie. “This cake is just awful good, Miss Hattie, but I’d go hungry to bed every night of my life just to see that old heathen get such a scare.”
“There, there, run to your room, like a good, dear Little Jess,” cried Hattie. “I hear the old thing shuffling up stairs again. I’ll see what new device she offers to stave off her fate, and then, as the soldiers say, I’ll unmask my battery.”
Little Jessie vanished, and only just in time, for, wheezing and puffing like a sick cat, Miss Scrimp came up the stairs, and with a face of an ashen hue, entered the room.
CHAPTER XII.
WILL SHE KEEP HER PROMISES?
“I couldn’t find the letter nowhere, Miss Hattie. I must have been mistaken,” whined Miss Scrimp. “And I’ve dragged my poor old bones all the way up these dreadful stairs again to tell you so.”
“Did you look on the shelf above your bed, where you laid it after opening and reading it?” asked Hattie, very quietly, but with her dark eyes fixed on the ashen face of the old vixen.