start for the South Sea Islands in about six weeks."
Something bitter rose up in my heart against Burr. I tossed the magazine aside. "Well," I replied briefly, "if you've finished I think I'll go along now."
Burr smiled down at me on the couch, and shook his head slowly. "You don't see my side, do you, Nan?" he asked gently.
"All I can see just now, Burr, I'm afraid," I replied, "is poor Elsie's chest of linen that she's been working on for four whole years, locked up in the attic, and your desk down there in New York occupied by some other young man who will make a success."
Burr shrugged his shoulders. "I see. I am just a good-for-nothing fellow in your estimation, and a sort of brute besides. Well—well, that's all right, Nan," he said, as if, somehow, I was the one who offended and he forgave me largely. "That's all right. Perhaps sometime you'll think differently. All I ask you to do now is to stand by Elsie after I've gone. I plan to take her out this afternoon in Father's car, and explain it all to her. She doesn't suspect. I haven't, at any rate, had the brutality to torture her slowly by neglect. I shall go back to New York at eight
