The colour ebbed still further from Dreda’s cheeks, her eyes grew wide and tragic, she extended her hands towards Susan, as if mutely appealing for help, and felt them clasped with a strong protecting pressure.
“You must go, but I’ll search. I’m a good looker, you know. Poor darling! It is hard, but I’ll help—I will help.”
Then Etheldreda the Ready threw her arms round her friend’s neck and cried brokenly:
“Susan, dear Susan, you are good, and I love you! I was horrid about the editorship... You would have been far better than I. This is my punishment—I have brought it on my own head.”
Her voice was so sweet, her eyes so liquid and loving, she drew herself up and marched to her doom with so gallant an air, that her faithful admirer thought instinctively of the martyrs of old. She turned and ran hurriedly upstairs.
Meantime Miss Drake sat looking towards the door with an impatient frown. The frown deepened at sight of Dreda’s empty hands, and she tapped on the table with the end of her pencil. Dreda’s heart sank still further at the sound which Miss Drake’s pupils had learnt to associate with their blackest hours.
“You have kept me waiting for ten minutes, Dreda. Where is your manuscript? I have no time to waste.”
“I—I—can’t—I can’t find it, Miss Drake.”
Miss Drake leant back in her chair and became in a moment a monument of outraged dignity. Looking at her, it was impossible to believe that one had even ventured on the liberty of calling her by so familiar an epithet as “The Duck.” She turned her long neck from side to side, elevated her eyebrows, and cleared her throat in an ominous manner.
“I am afraid I don’t understand. You told me a few minutes ago that everything was ready.”