"So you'll be particularly careful on my account."
"Mrs. Baker," said Charley, with infinite gravity, "if that bag should tumble off a dozen times between this and Laurel Hill, I'll hop down and pick it up myself."
"Thank you! shake!"
They shook hands gravely across the window ledge.
"And you ain't goin' down with us, Mrs. Baker?"
"Of course not; it wouldn't do—for I ain't here—don't you see?"
"Of course!"
She handed him the bag through the door. He took it carefully, but in spite of his great precaution fell over it twice on his way to the road, where from certain exclamations and shouts it seemed that a like miserable mischance attended its elevation to the boot. Then Mrs. Baker came back into the office, and, as the wheels rolled away, threw herself into a chair, and inconsistently gave way for the first time to an outburst of tears. Then her hand was grasped suddenly, and she found Green on his knees before her. She started to her feet.
"Don't move," he said, with weak hysteric passion, "but listen to me, for God's sake! I am ruined, I know, even though you have just saved me from detection and disgrace. I have been mad!—a fool, to do what I have done, I know, but you do not know all—you do not know why I did it—you can not think of the temptation that has driven me to it. Listen, Mrs. Baker. I have been striving to get money, honestly, dishonestly—anyway, to look well in your eyes—to make myself worthy of you—to make myself rich, and to be able to offer you a home and take you away from Laurel Run. It was all for you—it was all for love of you, Betsy, my darling. Listen to me!"
In the fury, outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust that filled her little body at that moment, she should have been large, imperious, goddess-like, and commanding. But God is at times ironical with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she could say was: "Leave me be, looney, or I'll scream!"