s of her head, "or if
anybody else said it, it was a stupid slander, which grows stupider
every time it is repeated."

I was a little nettled myself at her answering me like that. "You
didn't think so," I said, "when you begged him to go away from
Nepaug."

At this Winifred jumped straight up from her chair, running her hand
through her hair in a way she has when she is excited--"Did you hear
that? Then you must have been listening," she cried out, as if she
were accusing me of chicken-stealing.

"If you think that of me, Winifred, the sooner my trunk is packed the
better," I answered, as stiff as the Captain's monument on Duxbury
Hill.

In an instant Winifred was on her knees by my side, and had thrown her
arms around my neck.

"No, no, dear Miss Standish, I do not think it, and I ought not to
have said it. It only made me feel so badly to think of any one's
having overheard my secret, which after all was not my own."

Now here was my chance to find out the very thing which had been
bothering my old head all these weeks. I had only to pretend to know
and I should hear it all, for Winifred was in one of her rare
confidential moods. But that inconvenient New England conscience of
mine not only would not let me pretend, but it pricked me a little
with Winifred's accusation of having listened. Perhaps if my ears had
not been strained just a trifle, I should not have caught as much as I
did of the conversation at Flying Point. Anyway, I felt bound to
confess now.

"I did not hear anything but just your asking him to go away, and his
answering rather reluctantly that he did not want to, but he would."

"Then," said Winifred, "you are bound to take my word for the meaning
of the snatch of talk you heard, and I tell you that he acted like a
gentleman and a very honorable gentleman; moreover, that from that
good hour I began to be ashamed of my rash estimate of him (I always
do jump in overhead in my judgments) and am only waiting for a chance
to tell him so frankly, and to ask him to forget all my rude
speeches."

After this there was no more to be said. I only pray to be kept from
arguing. The habit of making comments has brought me into more trouble
than all my other vices put together. Well, this time grace was given
me to hold my tongue. When I saw a note addressed in Winifred's hand
to "J. Edwards Flint, Esq.," I did not even observe that it would have
been as well to let her father write it, nor did I say wh