“Oh, Godfrey, I must not stay here any longer. It is too much like listening. Let me go, please!” Gertie said, trying to release her hand.
But Godfrey held her fast, saying to her:
“It is not listening. If Alice does not wish us to hear, let her talk in her room, and not out of the window. I cannot let you go yet. I want you all to myself for a little while. I may not get another chance.”
He smiled bitterly, and then laying his disengaged hand on Gertie’s shoulder he suddenly asked:
“Why did you not answer my letters, Gertie?”
“Your letters, Godfrey! What letters? I never received a line from you,” Gertie said, while Godfrey rejoined:
“Never received a line from me! That is very strange!—and I wrote to you three different times. Think, Gertie,—try to recall it. Fours years ago, when you first went to school, and I came home and found you gone, I wrote from here how disappointed I was not to see you, and asked you to correspond with me, and let me be your brother. You were my little sister, I said; I adopted you as such, and I said a heap more soft nothings, as Alice might call them, though I was very much in earnest at the time, and to myself called you ‘La Sœur’ always. And you never received that letter?”
“Never, Godfrey. I should remember that, and you say you wrote again?”
“Yes, from Andover; and sent my photograph, and asked for yours in return, and bet fifty dollars with some students that I’d show them the handsomest picture they ever saw, and I waited so anxiously for it; but it never came, and at last I wrote again, and told you to go to thunder! I did, upon my word, I felt so piqued and slighted, and I said I meant to go to the bad, and smoke, and drink, and swear, and do everything I could think of.”
“Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey! You didn’t, though, I hope!” Gertie cried, while her fingers tightened around the hand holding them so fast.