“‘Yours truly,
“‘Sarabella Brande.’
“Now, what do you think of that?” inquired Jessie, looking alternately at her two staring sisters.
“I say that it is a hoax, of course! Some joke of yours, Jessie,” returned Honor, with a playful snatch at the letter. “What is all that gibberish about Uncle Pelham being a mother to one, and mother not being a blind horse, and the climatological condition of the hills, not to mention the snakes and the beaux? You ought to be ashamed—I could have done it better myself.”
“Read it—examine the post-mark,” said Jessie, now flinging it on the table.
Yes, there was no room for doubt; it was a bona-fide Indian epistle. As Honor turned it over critically, she suddenly exclaimed—
“Have you seen this—the gem of the whole production—the postscript?”
Both sisters bent forward eagerly, and there, just at the top of the last and otherwise blank sheet, was scribbled as a hasty afterthought—
“P.S.—Be sure you send the pretty one.”
“She must be a most original old person,” said Honor, with sparkling eyes. “And, in the name of Dr. Johnson, what is a ‘tamasha’?”
“Ask me something easier,” rejoined Jessie.