Yet the week she had allowed herself in which to think it
over, lengthened to ten days before she began to write her letter. She
sat down at her desk late in the afternoon, but by tea-time she had
done nothing more than tear up half a dozen beginnings. After supper
David rattled the backgammon-board significantly.
"You are pretty slow, aren't you?" he asked, as she loitered about her
desk, instead of settling down to the usual business of the evening.
"Don't you think, just to-night, you would rather read a story?" she
pleaded.
"No, ma'am," said David, cheerfully.
So, sighing, she opened the board on her knees. David beat her to a
degree that made him very condescending, and also extremely displeased
by the interruption of a call from William King.
"Nobody is sick," David said politely; "you needn't have come."
"Somebody is sick further up the hill," William excused himself,
smiling.
"Is Mr. Wright worse?" Helena said quickly. She lifted the backgammon-
board on to the table, and whispered a word of manners to David, who
silently stubbed his copper-toed shoe into the carpet.
"No," the doctor said, "he's better, if anything. He managed to ask
Simmons for a poached egg, which made the old fellow cry with joy; and
he swore at me quite distinctly because I did not get in to see him
this morning. I really couldn't manage it, so I went up after tea, and
he was as mad as--as David," said William, slyly.
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