Then I felt that I must tell him everything. So I did--every morsel, right from the beginning. He was so patient, so full of understanding and of sympathy; indeed, he was much more sympathetic than I deserved. Still, even if you are not deserving of sympathy, it is a comfort to receive it, particularly if it is nicely offered.
I do not wish to breathe a word against my own family. I am perfectly certain that no one could be fonder of Nora and the boys than I am. Yet I am inclined to think that there are times, when if one must confess, it is just as well to do it to someone who is not exactly a relation. One's relatives are apt to take such a narrow view. I am convinced that no one could have taken a broader view than Mr Sanford did; and he never laughed once. That, in itself, was an immense relief. I have noticed in Nora, even when I have been confiding to her the most serious things, a tendency to treat me as if I was not quite in earnest. There was nothing of that sort about Mr Sanford, not a trace; or, at least, if he did show some faint sign of my having afforded him amusement, he did not do it in a brutal way.
"Poor little soul!" he said, when I had finished. "Poor little soul!"--I was not certain that I liked him to address me in quite that form of words. But there was something so extremely soothing in his manner that I let it pass.--"And so this has been the cause of the trouble." He picked up the copy of the sentence which I had meant to send to the paper. "I see no reason why this should not have succeeded in winning the prize. If you will forgive me for posing as an expert, this handwriting is eminently characteristic."
"Don't be horrid!"
"Such is not my intention. I am not suggesting that the character given in the paper is particularly applicable to this."
"I know it isn't!"
"But it does not follow that this does not hint at something equally fine, though in a different way."
"Mr Sanford!"
"I must ask you to forgive me if I annoy you by the expression of my opinion. In any case, you are to be congratulated on what you have done."
"How do you make that out? When I have been winning other people's money with somebody else's writing?"