"'Well, Dolly! Well, Dolly!' he said in a husky voice, 'What do you think? I've got the card. Yes, the old card, mother,—the old card, girls! But something else besides. I've got a letter; guess who from?' But he was too impatient to wait. 'From this child's namesake,' he said before anybody could make a guess."
"'Dorothea Tracy!' exclaimed Issy."
"'Dorothea Tracy, herself. As nice a letter as ever you read. Poor Tracy is ill,—knocked down by money troubles. And that child all alone with him,—not a soul to help! Think, mother, if it were our Dolly!'"
"He showed me the card,—a queer old-fashioned blue thing, with a hideous bird sprawling across it. But if it had been the most perfect specimen of high art ever seen, my father couldn't have been more delighted. He tried to read Dorothea's letter aloud, and broke down over the first six lines; so then he gave it over to mother to read, and took to hugging me instead. And we all listened."
"It is a very simple and girlish sort of letter,—touching, my father said, but perhaps I am hard, for it didn't touch me. I kept thinking—But never mind about my thoughts."
"The letter began by saying that Colonel Tracy had been ill all the week; so ill that the Christmas card was forgotten. Dorothea had to go to his desk for something, and she came across an envelope with my father's name outside. So then, she says, she 'remembered'; and she thought she had better send it straight off, without asking her father, as the doctor wished him not to be excited."
"Next came a few words about having heard of the old friendship; and the sentence after I think I can write down from memory: 'Perhaps I shall not be wrong to tell you that the cause of my father's illness is money anxiety. I do not understand all about it; but I know that he is in debt for over nine hundred pounds, and he does not know how to meet it. I would not say this if you were not such a very old friend of his. I think he could not mind. We shall have to leave London soon; and I do not know yet where we shall go.' Then there was something more about how sorry she was that the card had not been sent earlier, and then,—'I have heard something about you all, not only from my father, but from Mr. Claughton and his brother.'"
"'There!' father said, while I was wondering whether she meant Mervyn or Edred by Mr. Claughton,' for she has seen them both. 'There! What do you all think of that?'"
"'Poor things! What is to be done?' mother asked."
"'I'll tell you what I should like to do,' my father said slowly,—not in a hurry now. He sat bolt upright, and looked round at each of us. 'I'll tell you what I have it in my mind to do. I should like to send Tracy a cheque for one thousand pounds, to put him straight.'"