One day, after ten or twelve days had gone by, she asked him, “You haven’t heard anything more from that girl?”
“What girl?” he returned, as if he did not know; and he frowned. “You mean the girl that wrote me about my story?”
He continued to frown rather more darkly. “I don’t see how you could expect me to hear from her, after what I wrote. But, to be categorical, I haven’t, mother.”
“Oh, of course not. Did you think she would be so easily silenced?”
“I did what I could to crush her into silence.”
“Yes, and you did quite right; I am more and more convinced of that. But such a very tough young person might have refused to stay crushed. She might very naturally have got herself into shape again and smoothed out the creases, at least so far to try some further defence.”
“It seems that she hasn’t,” Verrian said, still darkly, but not so frowningly.
“I should have fancied,” his mother suggested, “that if she had wanted to open a correspondence with you—if that was her original object—she would not have let it drop so easily.”
“Has she let it drop easily? I thought I had left her no possible chance of resuming it.”
“That is true,” his mother said, and for the time she said no more about the matter.