This was on Monday. On Tuesday the papers recorded everywhere Mr. Peter Coleman's remarkable success in Mrs. Newton Gerald's private theatricals. On Wednesday Susan found a letter from him on her desk, in the early afternoon, scribbled on the handsome stationery of his club.
MY DEAR SUSAN: I shall always think that you are the bulliest girl I ever knew, and if you throw me down on that arrangement for our old age I shall certainly slap you on the wrist. But I know you will think better of it before you are forty-one! What you mean by "things" I don't know. I hope you're not calling ME a thing!
Forrest is pulling my arm off. See you soon. Yours as ever, PETER.
The reading of it gave Susan a sensation of physical illness. She felt chilled and weak. How false and selfish and shallow it seemed; had Peter always been that? And what was she to do now, to-morrow and the next day and the next? What was she to do this moment, indeed? She felt as if thundering agonies had trampled the very life out of her heart; yet somehow she must look up, somehow face the office, and the curious eyes of the girls.
"Love-letter, Sue?" said Thorny, sauntering up with a bill in her hand. "Valentine's Day, you know!"
"No, darling; a bill," answered Susan, shutting it in a drawer.
She snapped up her light, opened her ledger, and dipped a pen in the ink.