Furneaux sat lingeringly with her, listening to an aviary of linnets that prattled to the bright sunlight that flooded the library, and asking himself whether he had ever seen hair so glaringly red as the lady secretary's—a great mass of it that wrapped her head like a flame.
"And where has Mr. Osborne gone to?" she murmured, making a note in shorthand on the back of one little bundle of correspondence.
"Somewhere by the coast—I think," said Furneaux.
"West coast? East coast?"
"He didn't write to me: he wrote to my Chief"—for, though Furneaux well knew where Osborne was, his retreat was a secret.
The girl went on with her work, plying the paper-knife, now jotting down a memorandum, now placing two or more kindred letters together: for every hospital and institution wrote to Osborne, everyone who wanted money for a new flying machine, or had a dog or a hunter to sell, or intended to dine and speechify, and send round the hat.
"It's quite a large batch of correspondence," Furneaux remarked.
"Half of these," the girl said, "are letters of abuse from people who never heard Mr. Osborne's name till the day after that poor woman was killed. All England has convicted him before he is tried. It seems unfair."
"Yes, no doubt. But 'to understand is to pardon,' as the proverb says. They have to think something, and when there is only one thing for them to think, they think it—meaning well. It will blow over in time. Don't you worry."
"Oh, I!—What do I care what forty millions of vermin choose to say or think?"