“And all we girls seem to be just delighted to break the rules, or try to fool the teachers. It really is dreadful! I guess we all must think that rules are made only to be broken.
“Oh, dear! perhaps if there were no laws none of us would care to go wrong,” concluded Nan, perhaps striking the key-note of all human frailty.
She went rather soberly up stairs and delivered her own trunk-key and the door-key to the matron, who she was glad asked her no questions. The afternoon mail had just arrived. May Winslow was acting as postmistress for the week, and the girls were crowding about the office table on which May had sorted the letters.
Either Dr. Prescott or Mrs. Cupp had run through the mail first. Letters from home were never held up. Suspicious looking letters had to be opened in the matron’s presence. Nan’s only missive this day was an unexpected one from Scotland.
She had grown to know just how the foreign mails were carried and when to look for a letter bearing the Emberon postmark. Somehow, this unexpected epistle frightened Nan.
She hurried up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read the letter alone. Her chum was not there and for once Nan was glad of that. Sitting by the window where the light was fading, Nan opened her letter.
“My dearest child:—
“Since writing you day-before-yesterday, we have received quite a shock. Your dear father is in such a state of mind that he cannot write to you about it. I am calm myself, dearest Nan, because I know that our Heavenly Father will not see us troubled more greatly than we can bear.
“I have, all the time, had perfect confidence in the final adjustment of Mr. Hughie Blake’s estate and the establishment of our clear title to it. It seemed as though this already was a fact. But a new difficulty has arisen. Just as Mr. Andrew Blake was about to take possession of the property in our name, a court order restrained him. A new branch of the family, at least, a newly discovered claimant by the name of Blake, has appeared. There are two sisters, maiden ladies, who claim that their mother was married to a man named Hugh Blake, who afterward separated from her. They have only recently found their mother’s marriage lines and their own birth certificates, proving the marriage and their own title to any property of which their father may have died possessed.
“Mr. Andrew Blake pooh-poohs this claim as he did the others. He is positive that Mr. Hughie Blake was never married. He was, in fact, notoriously a woman-hater. But while the Laird of Emberon was on his Continental travels many years ago, his steward, Hughie Blake, was for two years away from Castle Emberon. These two years correspond with the years in which these Blake sisters claim their father lived with their mother in a North of England shire.