ng Peggy read a
letter addressed by Harry Goward to you. This is intolerable,
Elizabeth Talbert. You have passed the limit of my endurance--and of my
husband's."

She brought out the last words very slowly, looking Aunt Elizabeth
straight in the eyes, and Aunt Elizabeth looked back with her head very
high. She has a lovely way of using such expressions as "For the rest"
and "As to that," and she did it now.

"As to that," she said, "my brother must speak for himself. No one
regrets more bitterly than I do this whole most unpleasant affair. I can
only say that with all my heart I am trying to straighten it out."

Grandma Evarts sniffed just then so loudly that we all looked at her,
and then, of course, mamma suddenly remembered that I was still there,
regarding the scene with wide, intelligent young eyes, and she nodded
toward the door, meaning for me to go out. My, but I hated to! I picked
up grandma's ball of wool and drew the footstool close to her feet, and
looked around to see if I couldn't show her some other delicate girlish
attention such as old ladies love, but there wasn't anything, especially
as grandma kept motioning for me to leave. So I walked toward the door
very slowly, and before I got there I heard Tom Price say:

"Oh, come now; we're making a lot of fuss about nothing. There's a very
simple way out of all this. Alice says Goward's still at the hotel.
I'll just run down there and explain, and ask him to whom that letter
belongs."

Then I was at the door, and I HAD to open it and go out. The voices went
on inside for a few minutes, but soon I saw Tom come out and I went to
him and slipped my arm inside of his and walked with him across the lawn
and out to the sidewalk. I don't very often like the things Tom says,
but I thought it was clever of him to think of going to ask Harry Goward
about the letter, and I told him so to encourage him. He thanked me very
politely, and then he stopped and braced his back against the lamp-post
on the corner and "fixed me with a stern gaze," as writers say.

"Look here, Clarry," he said ("Clarry" is short, he says, for Daily
Bugle and Clarion Call, which is "too lengthy for frequent use"),
"you're doing a lot of mischief to-day with your rural delivery
system for Goward and your news extras about Lorraine. What's this
cock-and-bull story you've got up about her, anyway?"

I told him just what I had seen. When I got through he said there was
"nothing in it."

"Th