sheet with the
other. Again I told her to go ahead. After a minute she went.

"You and Whythe have been such friends that I think you should be the
first to know that--"

"Have you and Whythe made up?" I stuck my bare foot over the edge of
the bed and wriggled it. "If you have you had better be married quick
and not take any more chances. I'm awfully glad if things are settled.
Have you bounced the other fellow yet?"

It was cruel in me to take out of her mouth what she was moistening her
lips to say, but I was sleepy and I didn't want details. She had no
idea of being cut out of saying what it was her determination to say,
however, considering I had been responsible for some unhappy days
during the past two months, and before she got through she had said all
she wanted me to hear. If it hadn't been for the pillow I would have
rolled out of bed. The nerve of her! The belief of her! And, oh, my
granny! the punishment, as she imagined, of me!

Before she left the room she told me she could no longer hold out
against Whythe's pleadings. Told me he had suffered so during the
summer she was uneasy about him, and, though he had tried to forget, it
had been useless, and, unable to endure it any longer, he had come to
her and told her he could stand no more, and if she did not promise to
marry him at once he would--he would-- Her voice trailed, but I said
nothing, the end of the sheet being stuffed into my mouth for
politeness' sake, and when her tears had been wiped away she began
again.

"It is hard to forgive Whythe, because you are so young, and he knows
how fascinating he is and how little experience you have had with young
men, but his father was a flirt before him" (poor Father! I thought of
the retribution that had come to him in Mother, and I pushed in more
sheet), "and it is natural in a man to seek amusement and entertainment
when he is suffering as Whythe was. I hope you will forgive him. It
is because he may have made you imagine things that were not so, and
because you have been so nice to him, that I thought you should be the
first to know."

I rolled back to the side of the bed facing her, from which I had
rolled the other way for safety, and took the end of the sheet out of
my mouth. "Have you told IT?" I asked. "It doesn't make any
difference about my knowing as I knew before you did, but something is
due that which you brought back with you. Have you told IT, Elizabeth?"

"Told who?