“I, I feel that it is important, too,” the little lady said.
“Well, my dear,” her husband finally advised, having waited in patience, “unless it is opened we shall never know whether your feeling is prophetic or not. 'By the itching of my thumb,' and so forth!”
Without making any rejoinder to this, and perhaps without hearing his gentle raillery, Mrs. Sherwood reached up to the coils of her thick hair to secure woman's never-failing implement, a hairpin.
There were two enclosures. Both she shook into her lap. The sealed, foreign-looking letter she picked up first. It was addressed in a clerkly hand to,
“MISTRESS JESSIE ADAIR BLAKE, “KINDNESS OF MESSRS. ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. “MEMPHIS, TENN., U.S.A.”
“From England. No! From Scotland,” murmured Nan, looking over her mother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card in the corner of the foreign envelope:
KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH
Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She looked up suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes.
“I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake,” she said.
“Oh, Momsey!” squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience. “Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!”