"I'm very glad to hear it," said Zora, in her frankest tone. But the little devil asked her whether she was quite sure; whereupon she hit him smartly over the head and bade him lie down. Her respect, however, for Sypher increased.
They were joined by Emmy and Septimus.
"I think I could manage it," said the latter, "if I cut a hole a foot square in the board and fixed a magazine behind it."
"There will be no necessity," returned Sypher. "Mrs. Middlemist has ordered its immediate removal."
That was the end of the board episode. The next day he had it taken down and chopped into fire-wood, a cart-load of which he sent with his humble compliments to Mrs. Middlemist. Zora called it a burnt offering. She found more satisfaction in the blaze that roared up the chimney than she could explain to her mother; perhaps more than she could explain to herself. Septimus had first taught her the pleasantness of power. But that was nothing to this. Anybody, even Emmy, curly-headed baby that she was, could turn poor Septimus into a slave. For a woman to impose her will upon Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity, the Colossus of Curemongers, was no such trumpery achievement.
Emmy, when she referred to the matter, expressed the hope that Zora had rubbed it into Clem Sypher. Zora deprecated the personal bearing of the slang metaphor, but admitted, somewhat grandly, that she had pointed out the error in taste.
"I can't see, though, why you take all this trouble over Mr. Sypher," said Emmy.
"I value his friendship," replied Zora, looking up from a letter she was reading.
This was at breakfast. When the maid had entered with the post Emmy had gripped the table and watched with hungry eyes, but the only letter that had come for her had been on theatrical business. Not the one she longed for. Emmy's world was out of joint.
"You've changed your opinion, my dear, as to the value of men," she sneered. "There was a time when you didn't want to see them or speak to them or have anything to do with them. Now it seems you can't get on without them."