.

"I'VE HINDERED HIM".
Billy was shaking with anger and terror by the time she had finished reading Kate's letter.

Anger was uppermost at the moment, and with one sweeping wrench of her trembling fingers she tore the closely written sheets straight through the middle, and flung them into the little wicker basket by her desk.

Then she went down-stairs and played her noisiest, merriest Tarantella, and tried to see how fast she could make her fingers fly.
But Billy could not, of course, play tarantellas all day; and even while she did play them she could not forget that waste-basket up-stairs, and the horror it contained.

The anger was still uppermost, but the terror was prodding her at every turn, and demanding to know just what it was that Kate had written in that letter, anyway.