The Seclusion of the Old Lady
my boy, is the form in which your prosaic good-nature will have to express itself."
"What!" I said, incredulously, "do you mean to say that you really did find anything the matter with the poor milkman?"
His face fell.
"Oh, the milkman," he said, with a miserable affectation at having misunderstood me. "No, I—I—didn't exactly bring anything home to the milkman himself, I—"
"What did the milkman say and do?" I said, with inexorable sternness.
"Well, to tell the truth," said Rupert, shifting restlessly from one foot to another, "the milkman himself, as far as merely physical appearances went, just said, 'Milk, miss,' and handed in the can. That is not to say, of course, that he did not make some secret sign or some—"
I broke into a violent laugh. "You idiot," I said, "why don't you own yourself wrong and have done with it? Why should he have made a secret sign any more than any one else? You own he said nothing and
223
