MISS REED, in a low voice: "Oh, how could you think such a cruel, vulgar thing?" Miss Spaulding leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register.

RANSOM: "It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole a.s.sociation, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a snub--a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn't see it in any other light." Ransom walks away to the window, and looks out.

MISS REED, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding her face in her hands: "Oh, it wasn't! it wasn't! it wasn't! How could you think so?"

MISS SPAULDING, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: "What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, over the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken leave of your senses?"

GRINNIDGE: "Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to be on the rampage."

MISS SPAULDING, shutting the register with a violent clash: "Ugh!

how hot it is here!"

GRINNIDGE: "Doesn't like your conversation, apparently."

MISS REED, frantically pressing forward to open the register: "Oh, don't shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n't shut the register!"

MISS SPAULDING: "Don't shut it? Why, we've got all the heat of the furnace in the room now. Surely you don't want any more?"

MISS REED: "No, no; not any more. But--but--Oh, dear! what shall I do?" She still struggles in the embrace of her friend.

GRINNIDGE, remaining quietly at the register, while Ransom walks away to the window: "Well, what did you do?"

MISS REED: "There, there! They're commencing again! DO open it, Nettie. I WILL have it open!" She wrenches herself free, and dashes the register open.

GRINNIDGE: "Ah, she's opened it again."

Miss Reed, in a stage-whisper: "That's the other one!"

RANSOM, from the window: "Do? I'll tell you what I did."

MISS REED: "That's Ol--Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can't make out what he's saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room-- and it's at the most important point!"

MISS SPAULDING, in an awful undertone: "Was that the hollow rumbling I heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they've been saying? O ETHEL!"

MISS REED: "I haven't been listening, exactly."

MISS SPAULDING: "You have! You have been eavesdropping!"

MISS REED: "Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around a corner. This is very different. Besides, it's Oliver, and he's been talking about ME. Hark!" She clutches her friend's hand, where they have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to the register. "Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat down below."

GRINNIDGE, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: "Well, you seem disposed to take your time about it."

RANSOM: "About what? Oh, yes! Well" -

MISS REED: "'Sh! Listen."

MISS SPAULDING: "I won't listen! It's shameful: it's wicked! I don't see how you can do it, Ethel!" She remains, however, kneeling near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more toward it.

RANSOM: "--It isn't a thing that I care to shout from the house- tops." He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. "I wrote the rudest kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with the summer, but that we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I should be sorry to meet her anywhere again."

GRINNIDGE: "Well, if you wanted to make an a.s.s of yourself, you did it pretty completely."

MISS REED, whispering: "How witty he is! Those men are always so humorous with each other."

RANSOM: "Yes; I didn't do it by halves."

MISS REED, whispering: "Oh, THAT'S funny, too!"

GRINNIDGE: "It didn't occur to you that she might feel bound to pay you for the first half-dozen, and was embarra.s.sed how to offer to pay for them alone?"

MISS REED: "How he DOES go to the heart of the matter!" She presses Miss Spaulding's hand in an ecstasy of approval.

RANSOM: "Yes, it did--afterward."

MISS REED, in a tender murmur: "Oh, POOR Oliver!"

RANSOM: "And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the whole affair."

MISS REED: "Oh, how generous! how n.o.ble!"

RANSOM: "I had had a thousand opportunities, and I hadn't been man enough to tell her that I was in love with her."

MISS REED: "How can he say it right out so bluntly? But if it's true" -

RANSOM: "I COULDN'T speak. I was afraid of putting an end to the affair--of frightening her--disgusting her."

MISS REED: "Oh, how little they know us, Nettie!"

RANSOM: "She seemed so much above me in every way--so sensitive, so refined, so gentle, so good, so angelic!"

MISS REED: "There! NOW do you call it eavesdropping? If listeners never hear any good of themselves, what do you say to that? It proves that I haven't been listening."

MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh! They're saying something else."

RANSOM: "But all that's neither here nor there. I can see now that under the circ.u.mstances she couldn't as a lady have acted otherwise than she did. She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a business matter, and I had forced her to do it."

MISS REED: "You HAD, you poor thing!"

GRINNIDGE: "Well, what do you intend to do about it?"

RANSOM: "Well" -

MISS REED: "'Sh!"

MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh!"

RANSOM: "--that's what I want to submit to you, Grinnidge. I must see her."