"But I'll run and fetch a cloak for you." Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Benny hurried from the office.
To be deserted thus was more than Hester had bargained for, and for a moment she felt helplessly dismayed. A sheet of paper, half-covered with writing, lay on the desk, and she put out a hand for it.
"Is this your letter? Perhaps you'll allow me to read it and see how far you and Mr. Benny have gone."
"That's the way. Only you mustn' give me no credit for it: I sits and looks on. 'Never take a hand in a business you don't know'—that's my motto."
Hester wished devoutly that it had also been hers. She picked up the paper and read—
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. We made a good passage, and arrived at Troy on the 14th inst., a romantic little harbour picturesquely situated on the south coast of Cornwall. Once a flourishing port, second only to London and Bristol, and still retaining in its ivy-clad fort some vestiges of its former glories, it requires the eye of imagination to summon back the days when (as Hals tells us) it manned and sent forth more than forty ships to the siege of Calais, A.D. 1347—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. We made a good passage, and arrived at Troy on the 14th inst., a romantic little harbour picturesquely situated on the south coast of Cornwall. Once a flourishing port, second only to London and Bristol, and still retaining in its ivy-clad fort some vestiges of its former glories, it requires the eye of imagination to summon back the days when (as Hals tells us) it manned and sent forth more than forty ships to the siege of Calais, A.D. 1347—"
Hester glanced at her client dubiously.
"That's all right, ain't it?" he asked.
"Ye—es." "Far as I remember, it tallies with the last letter he fixed up for me. Something about 'grey old walls' there was, too."