"I hope you did not say that, Fanny."
"If I didn't, I meant it; so that it amounts to the same thing. Don't be ungrateful, Phœbe. I inveigled him into writing to me for your sake, not for mine, though I do wear his letters next to my heart. He is supposed to be addressing me in his correspondence, but he is really writing to you, and he knows that you read every word. Is there one of his letters without a lot about you in it?"
"He is always thoughtful."
"A model young man; when he comes home we'll put him in a glass case. And now we must really get to sleep, or we shall have mamma crying outside in the passage, 'Girls, girls, put out the light!' Don't you feel tired, Phœbe?"
"But the letter, Fanny!"
"Oh, the letter! Well, if I wasn't almost forgetting it! I suppose it must be read. See, it is addressed from the Grimsel Hospice. That's where the monks are. What a splendid monk Fred would make! He really ought to become one. What do you think, Phœbe?"
Then Fanny kissed her cousin half a dozen times, and proceeded to read Fred Cornwall's letter.
CHAPTER XIV.
A BIT OF EDELWEISS.