George saw that his mother was anxious: he sprang out of the room in a moment.
Mr. Ellerslie rose, as if too impatient to be able to sit still; his wife clasped her trembling hands; but neither of them uttered a word till George returned with a letter.
“The Bristol post-mark!” muttered Mr. Ellerslie, as he broke the seal.
“George, my son,” said the lady, “go to the dining-room for a few minutes. You can take the book with you, if you like.”
George instantly obeyed, without speaking; and Mrs. Ellerslie fixed her blue eyes, with a look of intense anxiety, on the changing countenance of her husband.
“There—read it,” he exclaimed, when he had finished perusing the letter; “what do you say, Eliza, to that?” and he threw himself again on his chair.
“He writes kindly of George,” said the mother, after looking over the first page of the letter,—“‘I was much pleased with what I saw of your boy last year,—I don’t forget that he is my namesake.’” The poor mother’s face brightened up.
“Read on,” said her husband abruptly.
“It does not seem that he declines to assist you,” said the lady, still anxiously endeavouring to make out the crabbed handwriting before her; “on the contrary,” he writes, ‘I shall have a large sum at your disposal, such as I think will remove every difficulty.’”
“There’s an if to that. Read on a little farther.”