"I know of only one thing Bathalina is good for now," Patty remarked. "She'd make a very ornamental figure in a lunatic-asylum, with her long widow's veil."
"She is certainly crazy enough," put in Flossy. "She told me last night that Noah must have been familiar with the Bible, because he gave his sons names out of it, and that that showed how old the Bible was."
"There comes Will with the letters," Ease said, running to meet him.
"It's as good as eating perennial wedding-cake to see Ease and Will," Flossy laughed. "They are those two souls, you know, that have only a single thought."
"Young married couples," Patty returned somewhat cynically, "are apt to be so foolish that a single thought is quite as much as they can get up between them."
"You are getting misanthropical," Flossy said. "It isn't becoming. And, so saying, she went to stir up the young couple to see—Oh, here you are!"
"Here's a letter for Patty," Will said: "I think it is from Hazard Breck."
The letter which he put into his sister's hands was written in a bold, somewhat boyish hand, which always seemed to Patty very like Hazard himself. It was as follows:—
Dear Patty,—I don't know as I ought to write to you as I am going to, but I am sure you are too much my friend not to understand that I mean right. I want your help; and, to make things clear, I must tell you something. You know that Smithers woman who has got possession of Mullen House, and I dare say you have heard folks blame uncle Tom for taking so much care of her. He has always treated her better than she deserved. When her daughter ran away, she came after him to help find her; but they lost all trace till now. I am mixing things all up, for I hate to tell you the truth: it must come, though. You know well enough what father was, and—think how hard it is for me to tell you, Patty, and you'll excuse my writing this—Mrs. Smithers always said that this girl, her daughter, was my half-sister. Father asked uncle Tom, on his death-bed, to take care of the two; and she's had an income out of his pocket. The man with whom Alice Smithers ran away from Samoset has left her, and somehow or other she has got here. She met me on the street, and begged for a bit of bread. She is sick and penniless, and promises, that, if her mother will let her come home, she will behave. Mrs. Smithers only answers her letters by threats of vengeance if she dares go to Mullen House. I can't write to uncle Tom; for Mrs. Smithers hates him for having tried to make her behave decently, and, now that she is independent, she will do nothing for him. Cannot you do something, Patty, to help this poor girl? She looks half dead, and she has always been delicate.
I am too troubled about this to write about any thing else; but I hope you will have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Very truly yours,
Hazard Breck.
Patty read this letter carefully twice. Then she started up.