at
him hard I saw in his guilty face the terrible, terrible fear that he
had lost that letter; and I was so frightened that my legs gave way
under me, and I sat down on the grass in my fresh blue linen dress, just
where they had dripped and made it wet.

All this time Sidney Tracy was going through HIS pockets, too, and just
as I was getting up again in a hurry he took off his cap and emptied
his pockets into it. I wish you could have seen what that cap held
then--worms, and sticky chewing-gum, and tops, and strings, and hooks,
and marbles, and two pieces of molasses candy all soft and messy, and
a little bit of a turtle, and a green toad, and a slice of
bread-and-butter, and a dirty, soaking, handkerchief that he and Billy
had used for a towel. There was something else there, too--a dark, wet,
pulpy, soggy-looking thing with pieces of gum and molasses candy and
other things sticking to it. Sidney took it out and held it toward me in
a proud, light-hearted way:

"There's your letter, all right," he said, and Billy gave a whoop of joy
and called out, "Good-bye, Alice," as a hint for me to hurry home. I
was so anxious to get the letter that I almost took it, but I stopped in
time. I hadn't any gloves on, and it was just too dreadful. If you could
have seen it you would never have touched it in the world. I got near
enough to look at it, though, and then I saw that the address was so
dirty and so covered with gum and bait and candy that all I could read
was a capital "M" and a small "s" at the beginning and an "ert" at the
end; the name between was hidden. I covered my eyes with my hand and
gasped out to the boys that I wanted the things taken off it that didn't
belong there, and when I looked again Sidney had scraped off the worst
of it and was scrubbing the envelope with his wet handkerchief to make
it look cleaner. After that you couldn't tell what ANY letter was, so I
just groaned and snatched it from his hands and left those two boys in
their disgusting dirt and degradation and went home.

When I got back mamma and Grandma Evarts and Tom Price and Peggy and
Aunt Elizabeth were in the parlor, looking more excited than ever,
because Maria had been there telling the family about Lorraine. Then she
had gone on to Lorraine's and Tom had dropped in to call for her and was
waiting to hear about the letter. They were all watching the door when
I came in, and Peggy and Aunt Elizabeth started to get up, but sat down
again. I