Sally had been thinking. "I am afraid," she said softly, "that it was about me. I hoped she was all over it when I left."
Fox turned his head and looked at her, but he did not reply to her remark directly. "She said that you had gone for a walk, but she didn't know where. I waited a long time, thinking you might come in. Your mother and I had a long talk."
Sally would have given a good deal to know what the long talk was about. "It--it isn't true, Fox," she began slowly.
"What! It is true, too. We talked for an hour and forty minutes, while I was waiting. I know."
Sally laughed nervously. "I--I meant that anything you may hear about me isn't true."
"Clear as mud, Sally. Well, I'll remember. Anything that I hear about you isn't true. But I'm not likely to hear the voice of rumor especially if it's about you."
Sally made no reply to this, and Fox went on. "When it began to grow dark, I made some inquiries, and I found a certain person who had seen you go out; and you had met a man at the next corner--Who was the man, Sally?"
"Everett," Sally replied briefly; and she started to say more, but thought better of it--or worse, as you like--and shut her lips tight together.
"Oh, yes, she said she thought it was Everett. I thought that, perhaps, she was mistaken."
"No," said Sally, "she was not mistaken."
"Hum!" said Fox, smiling to himself; but Sally could not see that. "And this exceedingly well-informed person said that you and Everett evidently had a spat on the street corner, and that he went off, mad."
"Yes," said Sally, nodding. She might have known that Fox couldn't see the nod.
"Too bad!" said Fox. "Exemplary young man--especially one who has seen the world and who has as perfect manners as Everett wishes it to be thought that he has--shouldn't go off mad. Very young. It reminds one of your young friend, Spencer. We should expect him to go off mad, shouldn't we, Sally?"
"Well," Fox resumed, "finding that you had been last seen hiking down the street without male escort, Everett having got mad and declined to play and gone home,--it is to be hoped that he had gone home,--I put out after you, lippety-clippety. All the male inhabitants of Whitby seem to think that is their chief end in life."