A bank clerk sometimes has opportunities.
The stricken fat one could not understand how it came about that he had blurted out the damning confession that he had visited Beaver Beach.
When he tried to solve the puzzle, his mind refused the strain, became foggy and the terrors of his position acute.Was he, like Joe Louden, to endure the ban of Canaan, and like him stand excommunicate beyond the pale because of Martin Pike's displeasure? For Norbert saw with perfect clearness to-day what the Judge had done for Joe.
Now that he stood in danger of a fate identical, this came home to him.How many others, he wondered, would do as Mamie had done and write notes such as he had received by the hand of Sam Warden, late last night?
"DEAR SIR." (This from Mamie, who, in the Canaanitish way, had been wont to address him as "Norb"!)--"My father wishes me to state that after your remark yesterday afternoon on the steps which was overheard by my mother who happened to be standing in the hall behind you and your BEHAVIOR to himself later on--he considers it impossible to allow you to call any more or to speak to any member of his household.
"Yours respectfully, "MAMIE PIKE."
Erasures and restorations bore witness to a considerable doubt in Mamie's mind concerning "Yours respectfully," but she had finally let it stand, evidently convinced that the plain signature, without preface, savored of an intimacy denied by the context.