“Here’s a telegram, Dave, which I want you to send at once.”
“Day message, or night?” he inquired, taking it from her hand and beginning to count the words.
“Oh, day, of course,” she replied.
Suddenly he paused, with his pencil poised above the telegram, and a wave of red swept over his face and then receded, leaving it a chalky white. He did not lift his eyes, for a time, but seemed to study the telegram, reading it twice very slowly from beginning to end. Then he pushed the paper toward Phoebe and said in a hard, arrogant voice:
“I can’t send that.”
“Why not?” she asked in astonishment.
“I—it’s libelous,” he returned, rising from his chair before the table on which the telegraph instrument stood and facing the girl defiantly.
“It is not libelous!” she indignantly exclaimed.
“Well, I can’t send it; it’s against the rules of the office.”
Phoebe looked into his face searchingly and he half turned away. She remembered now Dave’s rabid enmity toward Toby Clark and concluded that he refused the telegram because he feared it would assist Toby’s case. But she would not be balked by such a ridiculous pretext and as her anger increased she grew more quiet and determined.