When Laura Ledwith had unfolded the large commercial sheet, and glanced down the open lines of square, upright characters, whose purport could be taken in at sight, like print, she turned very red with a sudden excitement. Then all the color dropped away, and there was nothing in her face but blank, pale, intense surprise.
"It is a most wonderful thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr. Oldways."
She spoke those four words as if from them Mrs. Megilp could understand everything.
Mrs. Megilp thought she did.
"Ah! Gone?" she asked, pathetically.
"Gone! No, indeed!" said Mrs. Ledwith. "He wrote the letter. He wants me to come; me, and all of us,—to Boston, to live; and to get acquainted with him."
"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, with the promptness and benignity of a Christian apostle, "it's your duty to go."
"And he offers me a house, and two thousand dollars a year."
"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, "it is emphatically your duty to go."
All at once something strange came over Laura Ledwith. She crumpled the letter tight in her hands with a clutch of quick excitement, and began to choke with a little sob, and to laugh at the same time.