Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner

with a sudden decision she drew a folded paper from the front of her dress.
    “Got another one, did you?” Miss Jenny asked, watching her. “Lemme see it.” She took the paper and opened it and stepped back out of the sun. Her nose glasses hung on a slender silk cord that rolled onto a spring in a small gold case pinned to her bosom. She snapped the cord out and set the glasses on her high-bridged nose, and behind them her gray eyes were cold and piercing as a surgeon’s.
    The paper was a single sheet of foolscap; it bore writing in a frank, open script that at first glance divulged no individuality whatever; a hand youthful yet at the same time so blandly and neatly unsecretive that presently you wondered a little.
    “You did not answere mine of 25th. I did not expect you answer it yet. You will answer soon I can wait. I will not harm you I am square and honest you will lern when our ways come to gether. I do not expect you answer Yet. But you know where you make a sign.”
    Miss Jenny refolded the paper with a gesture of fine anddelicate distaste. “I’d burn this thing, if it wasn’t the only thing we have to catch him with. I’ll give it to Bayard tonight.”
    “No, no,” the other protested quickly, extending her hand. “Please dont. Let me have it and tear it up.”
    “It’s our only evidence, child—this and the other one. We’ll get a detective.”
    “No, no; please! I dont want anybody else to know about it. Please, Miss Jenny.” She reached her hand again.
    “You want to keep it,” Miss Jenny accused coldly. “Just like a young fool woman, to be flattered by a thing like this.”
    “I’ll tear it up,” the other repeated. “I would have sooner, but I wanted to tell someone. It—it—I thought I wouldn’t feel so filthy, after I had shown it to someone else. Let me have it, please.”
    “Fiddlesticks. Why should you feel filthy? You haven’t encouraged it, have you?”
    “Please, Miss Jenny.”
    But Miss Jenny still held on to it. “Dont be a fool,” she snapped. “How can this thing make you feel filthy? Any young woman is liable to get an anonymous letter. And a lot of ’em like it. We all are convinced that men feel that way about us, and we cant help but admire one that’s got the courage to tell us, no matter who he is.”
    “If he’d just signed his name. I wouldn’t mind who it was.
    But like this.…… Please, Miss Jenny.”
    “Dont be a fool,” Miss Jenny repeated. “How can we find who it is, if you destroy the evidence?”
    “I dont want to know.” Miss Jenny released the paper and Narcissa tore it into bits and cast them over the rail and rubbed her hands on her dress. “I dont want to know. I want to forget all about it.”
    “Nonsense. You’re dying to know, right now. I bet you lookat every man you pass and wonder if it’s him. And as long as you dont do something about it, it’ll go on. Get worse, probably. You better let me tell Bayard.”
    “No, no. I’d hate for him to know, to think that I would——might have.…… It’s all right: I’ll just burn them up after this, without opening them.… I must really go.”
    “Of course: you’ll throw ’em right into the stove,” Miss Jenny agreed with cold irony. Narcissa descended the steps and Miss Jenny came forward into the sunlight again, letting her glasses whip back into the case. “It’s your business, of course. But I’d not stand for it, if ’twas me. But then, I aint twenty-six years old.… Well, come out again when you get another one, or you want some more flowers.”
    “Yes, I will. Thank you for these.”
    “And let me know what you hear from Horace. Thank the Lord, it’s just a glass-blowing machine, and not a war widow.”
    “Yes, I will. Goodbye.” She went on through the dappled shade in her straight white dress and her basket of flowers stippled upon it, and got in her car. The top was back and she put her hat on and started the engine, and looked back again and waved