But you're not to do it. I will see March myself. We
must consider your dignity in this matter--and mine. And you may as well
understand that I'm not going to have any nonsense. It's got to be
managed so that it can't be supposed we're anxious about it, one way or
the other, or that he was authorized to write to you in this way--"
"No, no! He oughtn't to have done so. He was to blame. He couldn't have
written to you, though, papa--"
"Well, I don't know why. But that's no reason why we should let it be
understood that he has written to you. I will see March; and I will
manage to see his wife, too. I shall probably find them in the
reading-room at Pupp's, and--"
The Marches were in fact just coming in from their breakfast at the
Posthof, and he met them at the door of Pupp's, where they all sat down
on one of the iron settees of the piazza, and began to ask one another
questions of their minds about the pleasure of the day before, and to
beat about the bush where Burnamy lurked in their common consciousness.
Mrs. March was not able to keep long from starting him. "You knew," she
said, "that Mr. Burnamy had left us?"
"Left! Why?" asked the general.
She was a woman of resource, but in a case like this she found it best to
trust her husband's poverty of invention.
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