"Nonsense," she was saying querulously. "Don't you suppose I can smell? Do you think because I'm a little hard of hearing that I've lost my other senses? Somebody's been smoking."
"It's me," Heppie shouted. "I—"
"You?" Miss Letitia snarled. "What are you smoking for? That ain't my shirt; it's my—"
"I ain't smokin'," yelled Heppie. "You won't let me tell you. I spilled vinegar on the stove; that's what you smell."
Miss Letitia's sardonic chuckle came through the door.
"Vinegar," she said with scorn. "Next thing you'll be telling me it's vinegar that Harry and Mr. Knox carry around in little boxes in their pockets. You've pinned my cap to my scalp."
I hurried down-stairs to find Davidson gone. My blanket lay neatly folded, on the lower step, and the horsehair chairs were ranged along the wall as before. I looked around anxiously for telltale ashes, but there was none, save, at the edge of the spotless register, a trace. Evidently they had followed the apple parings. It grew cold a day or so later, and Miss Letitia had the furnace fired, and although it does not belong to my story, she and Heppie searched the house over to account for the odor of baking apples—a mystery that was never explained.
Wardrop did not appear at breakfast. Margery came down-stairs as Bella was bringing me my coffee, and dropped languidly into her chair. She looked tired and white.
"Another day!" she said wearily. "Did you ever live through such an eternity as the last thirty-six hours?"
I responded absently; the duty I had assumed hung heavy over me. I had a frantic impulse to shirk the whole thing: to go to Wardrop and tell him it was his responsibility, not mine, to make this sad-eyed girl sadder still. That as I had not his privilege of comforting her, neither should I shoulder his responsibility of telling her. But the issue was forced on me sooner than I had expected, for at that moment I saw the glaring head-lines of the morning paper, laid open at Wardrop's plate.