“What is the matter? You look as if you had got Lemuel Barker back on your hands.”
“I have,” said the minister briefly.
Miss Vane gave a wild laugh of delight. “You don't mean it!” she sputtered, sitting down before him, and peering into his face. “What do you mean?”
Sewell was obliged to possess Miss Vane's entire ignorance of all the facts in detail. From point to point he paused; he began really to be afraid she would do herself an injury with her laughing.
She put her hand on his arm and bowed her head forward, with her face buried in her handkerchief. “What—what—do you suppose-pose—they did with the po-po-poem they stole from him?”
“Well, one thing I'm sure they didn't do,” said Sewell bitterly. “They didn't read it.”
Miss Vane hid her face in her handkerchief, and then plucked it away, and shrieked again. She stopped, with the sudden calm that succeeds such a paroxysm, and, “Does Mrs. Sewell know all about this?” she panted.
“She knows everything, except my finding him in the dish-washing department of the Wayfarer's Lodge,” said Sewell gloomily, “and my coming to you.”
“Why do you come to me?” asked Miss Vane, her face twitching and her eyes brimming.
“Because,” answered Sewell, “I'd rather not go to her till I have done something.”