And now
she understood that he would not speak; and she knew why.... How her
heart warmed to him for his honorable silence in defense of his unworthy
friend.
But she herself was under no such restraint. "It isn't that," she said
quickly. "It's the reformatory--I've worried myself sick over it."
West averted his gaze; he saw that it had come, and in a peculiarly
aggravated form. He recognized at once how impossible it would be to
talk the matter over, in a calm and rational way, under such conditions
as these. This little girl had brooded over it till the incident had
assumed grotesque and fantastic proportions in her mind. She was seeing
visions, having nightmares. In a soothing, sympathetic voice, he began
consoling her with the thought that a postponement for two brief years
was really not so serious, and that--
"It isn't that!" she corrected him again, in the same voice. "That was
pretty bad, but--what I have minded so much was M---- was the _Post's_
desertion."
West's troubled eyes fell. But some hovering imp of darkness instantly
popped it into his head to ask: "Have you seen Queed?"
"No," said Sharlee, colorlessly.
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