"That can soon be put right; I wish I'd done no worse harm than that."
"What else have you done, for goodness' sake?"
Bee's lips tightened. She pointed to David's letter, which had fallen to the floor.
"Have you forgotten he loves you?" she asked.
"Oh!" Hilda was relieved. "Well, you'll have to own up to everybody, that's all," she said; "I hope you'll like it. But carrying on a correspondence with a man you've never seen—you! That's what gets over me. What on earth did you find to say to him?"
"I wrote about his work."
"And why should you have minded his knowing about your accident—what difference did that make? Really"—her vexation melted into amusement—"it may have been all about poetry and the fine arts, but it was going rather far, wasn't it? If I had done such a thing—-A secret correspondence with a strange man! I'd never have believed it of you. I'm appalled. I shouldn't like to call you 'fast,' but——And he turns out to be a nigger!" Her laughter pealed. "Oh, it's funny! it is, it is, it's screaming!"
"He loves you," said the woman again, flushing to the temples; "try to remember it."
The ridicule in the girl's stare shamed her through and through. She picked the scattered pages up, and folded them. Hilda took them negligently, and stood struggling to control her mouth. Smiles still played hide-and-seek with the dimple in her cheek.
"Which likeness has he got of me?" she said after a minute.