Part 20 (2/2)

But he should have been cautious how he disposed of the letter--in the fire, for choice. Only, you see, that was not Hugh John's way. He stuck it in his pocket-book, and pulled it out with his handkerchief just in time for Mrs. Nipper Donnan, on her way home with her groceries, to find it. In the little skin-covered book (which had once been ”imitation shark”), wrapped in a piece of tissue-paper, was also the half of a crooked sixpence.

Next morning but two, in far-away Paris, in front of a tall plastered house with big barren windows, Miss Cecilia Carter, walking to and fro with two of her companions, had an odd-looking, ill-addressed packet put into her hand. She opened it with a little glow of expectation--and there in her hand lay the other half of the crooked sixpence!

Cissy Carter did not faint. She did not cry out. There is no record, even, that she went pale. At any rate the school registers bear out the fact that a quarter of an hour after she took her lesson in ”theory”

from the music-master, Herr Rohrs. She only felt that something had broken within her--something not to be mended or ever set right, something she could not even have the relief of speaking about as the French girls did, rhapsodizing eternally about the officers who rode past the gate, slacking the speed of their horses a little that they might stare up the avenue along which the young girls walked two-and-two, also on the look-out for them.

She had told Hugh John often just what had happened. She had cast it in his face, when the pretty spite of her temper got the better of her, that, some day or other, it would come to this. But in her heart of hearts she had never really thought so for a moment.

Hugh John untrue! Oh, no! _That_ was impossible! It did not enter into the scheme of things.

Yes, certainly, twice, in a fit of ”the pet,” she had sent hers back to Hugh John. But this was different--oh, so different! How different, only those who knew Hugh John could understand. When _he_ did such a thing, he meant something by it. Hugh John had no silly flashes of temper--like a girl--like her, Cissy Carter.

So she thought to herself as she went about her work, the rodent which we children call the ”Sorrow Rat” gnawing all day at her heart, the noise of the cla.s.s-rooms, ordinarily so deafening, dull and distant in her ear.

All over! Yes, it was all over. Hugh John had wished it so, and from that, she well knew, there was no appeal! And there was (I know it well) one sad little heart the more in that great city of Paris, where (if one must believe the books) there are too many already.

But Cissy did not take offense, and I had my weekly letter as usual.

Perhaps it was a little more staid, a little less ”newsy,” and her interest in Herr Rohrs not quite so profound. But really I put all that down to the cold and headache of which Cissy complained in a postscript--and, not even there, was there a hint as to the other half of the crooked sixpence! Which is a record for one woman--girl, I mean--writing to another.

Hugh John was anything but sentimental, and it was not his habit to take out the relic wrapped in the tissue-paper oftener than the rearrangement of his scanty finances compelled. He would just give his pocket a slap, and if he felt a lump--why, he thought no more about the matter. He was preparing for college, and, knowing no reason why he should be uneasy, he had immersed himself in his books. He had not the smallest idea that the sharkskin purse, empty, lay in Mrs. Nipper Donnan's drawer, or that the two pieces of the crooked sixpence were wrapped together in the same tissue-paper in far-away Paris.

XXI

ADA WINTER AND ”YOUNG MRS. WINTER”

While these things were pending, I went one day to the north side of Edam Water to call upon Ada Winter. I had known Ada at school--not in the same cla.s.s or term, of course, but just because we came from the same place we nodded, if we were not in too great a hurry, when we crossed each other in the playground.

It was not much, but I have noticed that you get more fond of school after you have left it a while. Before, it was ”the beastly hole,”

”Treadmill House,” and other pretty little innocent names. Immediately after leaving school, however, it became ”the dear old place,” a little walled Paradise; and we used to go regularly to the station to see the girls who were still there going off ”with smiling faces veiling sad hearts,” as Hugh John said--and, of course, as I know now, wis.h.i.+ng us all at Jericho.

At any rate I called upon Ada Winter, and among other things we talked about the choir practice at our church, and I asked Ada why she did not go. You see, she had been with me in the school choir, where, as in most choirs, they put the pretty girls in front. (No, I shan't tell where I sat, not I!)

”Why,” said Ada, with an inflection which would have been bitter but for its sadness, ”why I can't go to choir practice is not because I have lost my voice, as mother tells everybody. But because mother wants to go herself! Some one has got to stay at home.”

”But Mrs. Winter--but your mother,” I began, ”she does not----”

”I know--I know--you need not repeat it,” cried Ada, feeling for her handkerchief in a quick, nervous way she always had. ”Mother cannot sing a note, and every one there makes fun of the way she dresses! Oh, don't I know!”

And she dabbed at her eyes, while I tried to think of something to say--something that obstinately kept away. I wanted to comfort her, you see, but you have no idea till you have tried how difficult it is to comfort (or even to answer) a girl who talks about her mother like that.

Of course I knew very well that it was all true. Mrs. Winter's youthful toilettes and girlish airs were the talk of the ”visiting” good wives of Edam--and very respectable and noticing women these were, even beyond the average of a Scottish ”neighborhood”--half village, half town--which is, they say, the highest in the world.

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