She had told Hugh John often just what had happened. She had cast it in his face, when the pretty spite of her temper got the better of her, that, some day or other, it would come to this. But in her heart of hearts she had never really thought so for a moment.
Hugh John untrue! Oh, no! That was impossible! It did not enter into the scheme of things.
Yes, certainly, twice, in a fit of "the pet," she had sent hers back to Hugh John. But this was different—oh, so different! How different, only those who knew Hugh John could understand. When he did such a thing, he meant something by it. Hugh John had no silly flashes of temper—like a girl—like her, Cissy Carter.
So she thought to herself as she went about her work, the rodent which we children call the "Sorrow Rat" gnawing all day at her heart, the noise of the class-rooms, ordinarily so deafening, dull and distant in her ear.
All over! Yes, it was all over. Hugh John had wished it so, and from that, she well knew, there was no appeal! And there was (I know it well) one sad little heart the more in that great city of Paris, where (if one must believe the books) there are too many already.
But Cissy did not take offense, and I had my weekly letter as usual. Perhaps it was a little more staid, a little less "newsy," and her interest in Herr Rohrs not quite so profound. But really I put all that down to the cold and headache of which Cissy complained in a postscript—and, not even there, was there a hint as to the other half of the crooked sixpence! Which is a record for one woman—girl, I mean—writing to another.
Hugh John was anything but sentimental, and it was not his habit to take out the relic wrapped in the tissue-paper oftener than the rearrangement of his scanty finances compelled. He would just give his pocket a slap, and if he felt a lump—why, he thought no more about the matter. He was preparing for college, and, knowing no reason why he should be uneasy, he had immersed himself in his books. He had not the smallest idea that the sharkskin purse, empty, lay in Mrs. Nipper Donnan's drawer, or that the two pieces of the crooked sixpence were wrapped together in the same tissue-paper in far-away Paris.