"But what DID you do?" cried Nancy Ellen.
So Kate told them exactly what she had done.
"Of course you had a right to your own letter, when you could see
the address on it, and it was where you could pick it up," said
Robert Gray.
Kate lifted dull eyes to his face.
"Thank you for so much grace, at any rate," she said.
"I don't blame you a bit," said Nancy Ellen. "In the same place
I'd have taken it myself."
"You wouldn't have had to," said Kate. "I'm too abrupt -- too
much like the gentleman himself. You would have asked him in a
way that would have secured you the letter with no trouble."
Nancy Ellen highly appreciated these words of praise before her
lover. She arose immediately.
"Maybe I could do something with him now," she said. "I'll go and
see."
"You shall do nothing of the kind," said Kate. "I am as much
Bates as he is. I won't be taunted afterward that he turned me
out and that I sent you to him to plead for me."
"I'll tell him you didn't want me to come, that I came of my own
accord," offered Nancy Ellen.
"And he won't believe you," said Kate.
"Would you consent for me to go?" asked Robert Gray.
"Certainly not! I can look out for myself."
"What shall you do?" asked Nancy Ellen anxiously.
"That is getting slightly ahead of me," said Kate. "If I had been
diplomatic I could have evaded this until morning. Adam, 3d, is
to be over then, prepared to take me anywhere I want to go. What
I have to face now is a way to spend the night without letting the
neighbours know that I am turned out. How can I manage that?"
Nancy Ellen and Robert each began making suggestions, but Kate
preferred to solve her own problems.
"I think," she said, "that I shall hide the telescope under the
privet bush, there isn't going to be rain to-night; and then I
will go down to Hiram's and stay all night and watch for Adam when
he passes in the morning. Hiram always grumbles because we don't
come oftener."
"Then we will go with you," said Nancy Ellen. "It will be a
pleasant evening walk, and we can keep you company and pacify my
twin brother at the same time."
So they all walked to the adjoining farm on the south and when
Nancy Ellen and Robert were ready to start back, Kate said she was
tired and she believed she would stay until morning, which was
agreeable to Hiram and his wife, a girlhood friend of Kate's. As
Nancy Ellen and Robert walked back toward home: "How is this
going to come out?" he asked, anxiously.