"You may know it," I replied. Mac was bending over his plate, rubbing the ink in with deft fingers, and I saw his lowered glance flutter in my direction for a moment.
"You mean Mac knows and you don't feel sure whether he's told me," interpreted Bill, shaking the tea-pot. I laughed.
"Into that we will not go," I said. "Suffice it that if he knows it was because I told him."
"I knew it was something you were ashamed of," she exclaimed, triumphantly. "Go on: out with it!"
"How can I be ashamed of it since I am about to tell you?" I demanded, incautiously.
"Why, because your love of scandal is so tremendous that you sacrifice even yourself to it!" she answered.
"Thank you," I said. "Here is my item: They correspond."
"That's nothing to go on!" cried the lady. I dared no more than smile. Mac grinned as he lifted the plate from the gas stove and, giving it a final polish, carried it to the press. "Oh, well!" went on Bill, irrelevantly, "let us all be honest and say we're interested. If he exists, he will come along some time."
The press creaked and the spokes turned. We both paused involuntarily as Mac bent over and lifted the blankets. This is always a moment of anxiety. It was a theory among us that when Samuel Johnson wrote "The Vanity of Human Wishes" he had been pulling proofs from copper. Bill had confessed to me that she could not help holding her breath, sometimes. Her husband turned upon us with a smile of satisfaction.
"If we're all going to be honest," he remarked, "we all ought to know as much as each other, eh? Well then, tell us about the correspondence, old man. What do you know?"