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The hypothesis that Seth had imagined that they were Cressy's letters, and had thrown them down without reading them when he had found out his mistake, seemed natural. For if he had read them he would undoubtedly have kept them to show to Cressy.
Who was he, nameless as he was, to enter the lists against Philip Lambert or any one else? The car sped away, leaving Phil standing bareheaded in the sunshine, staring after it. The mocking silver lilt of Carlotta Cressy's laughter drifted back to him. He shrugged, jammed on his hat and strode off in the direction of the trolley car.
His rage with Seth Davis seemed to him the only feeling left that was genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoundrel's touch. Perhaps he had read them and left them to be picked up by others.
From that day on, however, he not only hated those dogs, but disliked the man who cares for them, and seemed to consider him responsible for their very existence. And it was wonderful that he should recognize Cressy's step on the ground as he passed at the side of our house.
In spite of Cressy's warning rather because of it in the new attitude he had taken towards her and her friends, he lingered in the school-house until late. He had occupied himself in drawing up a statement of the facts, with an intimation that his continuance in the school would depend upon a rigid investigation of the circumstances, when he was aroused by the clatter of horses' hoofs.
Had this selfish savage and literally red-handed frontier brawler been moved by some dumb instinct of the power of gentleness to understand his daughter's needs better than he? For a moment he was staggered. Then he thought of Cressy's later flirtations with Joe Masters, and her concealment of their meeting from her mother. Had she deceived her father also?
"What's gone of you anyway, nigger boy?" It should be premised that Cressy's terms of endearment were mainly negro-dialectical, reminiscences of her brief babyhood, her slave-nurse, and the only playmates she had ever known.
He put his work away, lingered for a moment in hesitation over the myrtle sprays, and then locked them in his desk with an odd feeling that he had secured in some vague way a hold upon Cressy's future vagaries; then reflecting that Uncle Ben, whom he had seen in town, would probably keep holiday with the others, he resolved to wait no longer, but strolled back to the hotel.
Opening his desk, he began to arrange his papers mechanically, when he discovered, with a slight feeling of annoyance, that he had placed Cressy's bouquet now dried and withered in the same pigeon-hole with the mysterious letters with which he had so often communed in former days.
"Cressy's a noble soup, and Flopsie makes it well, a man might do wuss than marry Flopsie. She's a widder, and a leetle old just a leetle old for me but " Here he sniffed delicately at a sprig of thyme he had gathered, and smiled consciously.
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