CHAPTER XXI
THE FIRST LETTERS
“Hullo, Robert Roberts! Any letters for us?” sang out Theo.
She had darted out of the cottage, hatless, as usual, her nose already peeling with sunburn and her long bare legs covered with midge-bites and sea-holly scratches down to her white sand-shoes, to waylay our postman; he’s the son of Mrs. Roberts, our landlady, a young Welsh giant who wears that uniform coat for just that five minutes daily which it takes him to deliver the mails at Porth Cariad.
“Yes, mam!” he announced. “Picture poss-card for you—I wonder shall I have it, mam, when you read it? Blodwen and me is making a co-leckshon of those. Letter for your mother; letter an’ big parsal for the strange young lady.”
I—who have not been seen in the place before this year—am the strange young lady.
“Here you are,” said Theo, bringing the mail into the kitchen-sitting-room where we’d just finished breakfast; a room that boasts three grandfather clocks and five pairs of china dogs and a dresser crowded with blue-and-white plates. “The letter and the ‘parsal’ for Nancy are both from the Adored One!”
Meaning her brother.
“And I suppose you’ll now have to fly off somewhere to read your love-letter all by yourself.”
“Of course I must,” I laughed.
For it’s rather amusing in the face of all this to think that, except for one sentimental scrap from Sydney, I’ve never had a love-letter to read in all my life!