“What I don’t understand, Bab,” she said, “is, why no noise?”
“Because he is writing,” I explained. “Although his clothing has been taken away, he is writing. I don’t think I told you, Jane, but that is his business. He is a Writer. And if I tell you his name you will faint with surprise.”
“Locked up—and writing, and his clothing gone! What’s he writing, Bab? His Will?”
“He is doing his duty to the end, Jane,” I said softly. “He is writing the last Act of a Play. The Company is rehearsing the first two Acts, and he has to get this one ready, though the Heavens fall.”
But to my surprise, she got up and said to me, in a firm voice:
“Either you are crazy, Barbara Archibald, or you think I am. You’ve been stuffing me for about a week, and I don’t beleive a Word of it. And you’ll apologize to me or I’ll never speak to you again.”
She said this loudly, and then went away. And Mr. Beecher said, through the door:
“What the Devil’s the row about?”
Perhaps my nerves were going, or possably it was no luncheon and probably no dinner. But I said, just as if he had been an ordinary person: