“And you got this beautiful ‘Lyra Innocentium’ for me? How very kind of you, Norman. It is just what I wished for. Such lovely binding—and those embossed edges to the leaves. Oh! they make a pattern as they open! I never saw anything like it.”
“I saw such a one on Miss Rivers’s table, and asked Ernescliffe where to get one like it. See, here’s what my father gave me.”
“‘Bishop Ken’s Manual’. That is in readiness for the Confirmation.”
“Look. I begged him to put my name, though he said it was a pity to do it with his left hand; I didn’t like to wait, so I asked him at least to write N. W. May, and the date.”
“And he has added Prov. xxiii. 24, 25. Let me look it out.” She did so, and instead of reading it aloud, looked at Norman full of congratulation.
“How it ought to make one—” and there Norman broke off from the fullness of his heart.
“I’m glad he put both verses” said Ethel presently. “How pleased with you he must be!”
A silence while brother and sister both gazed intently at the crooked characters, till at last Ethel, with a long breath, resumed her ordinary tone, and said, “How well he has come to write with his left hand now.”
“Yes. Did you know that he wrote himself to tell Ernescliffe Sir Matthew’s opinion of Margaret?”
“No: did he?”