He did not finish the sentence aloud, but as he scowled into the fire, he added to himself, "I don't like it!"
CHAPTER XI
PHIL GOES TO WARWICK HALL
Had it not been for that package of letters read aloud before the fire on that stormy March night, this story might have had a very different ending. But for them Phil never would have known what a winsome, unselfish character the little Vicar had grown up to be. The casual meetings of years could not have revealed her to him as did these intimate glimpses of her daily life and thought, through her letters to Joyce.
They showed her childishly jubilant in her delight when the first month's salary was paid into her hands, and yet practical and womanly in her plans for spending it. Like a child she was, too, in her laments over some of the mistakes which her inexperience led her into with Brud and Sister, yet he could see plainly underneath her whimsical words her deep earnestness of purpose. At last she had recognized that this opportunity to impress them with her high ideals was one of the King's calls, and she was bending every energy to the keeping of that tryst. It was this development of character which interested Phil, even more than the news of the letters. Still there were a number of items which gave him something to think about. Lieutenant Boglin had made a second visit. Once she mentioned a book he had sent her, and another time a rare butterfly to add to the new collection she was starting. Evidently they had found several interests in common.
On his last visit she had taken him to Fernbank in the boat, and he had captured a fine big hairy tarantula for her from among the roots of a clump of maidenhair ferns. She had been able to enjoy the boat a great deal more since the children had learned the meaning of the word obey. She could take them with her now without fear of their rocking the boat, and in consequence they had had many a delightful hour on the water that had not been possible before.
"Do you know," said Phil, slowly, when he had listened awhile longer, "it doesn't strike me that those are particularly doleful letters; at any rate, anything to send you into an 'orgy of weeps.' I believe it is nothing but the weather which gave you the spell of doldrums that you were in when I came."