"This isn't the end," he said.
"Oh, no!" she sighed with dreary prescience.
"I am working for you from morning till night--only for you--so that I can
put you in a nice house, and make a lady of you. Only for you! And all
night long I can't rest for thinking of you. Mine'll be an awful night,
to-night."
"Oh, Mr. Gibbon, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"
"Then, can't you say a word to me before you go? Can't you say you'll
think of it?"
"Of course I shall think of it; I can't help thinking of it. But I don't
wish to talk of it any more. Let me go now, will you? Let me go to bed!
Good-night, Mr. Gibbon."
"Say 'Good-night, Charlie.' They call me 'Charlie' at home."
There was no help for it if she wished to escape. "Good-night, Charlie,"
she mumbled, and rushed away to her own room, in a condition between
laughing and crying which recalled Bessie's attacks.
"It is all so ridiculous!" she kept saying to herself as she undressed.
"'Good-night, Charlie!' Imagine my having called him 'Charlie.' Charlie,
indeed!" She set her teeth at the remembrance. "I would rather have hit
him than called him Charlie!"
But as she undressed herself the more serious side of the position
presented itself for consideration.
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