My dear Susan,
Mamma desires me to say that she hopes you and Bessie and Annie will come to dine early to-morrow, and play with me, and that Miss Fosbury will come with you. She hopes your Mamma is better, and would be glad to have her address in London.
I am your affectionate
Ida Arabella Greville.
“Oh! Miss Fosbrook, may we go?” cried the girls with sparkling eyes.
Mrs. Merrifield had written that one or two such invitations might be accepted, but she had rather it did not happen too often, as visits at the Park were unsettling to some of the children. So as this was the first, Christabel gladly consented, rather curious and rather shy on her own account.
Elizabeth begged for the rose, to copy it, and as there were no little ones present to seize it, she was allowed to have it; while Susan groaned and sighed over the misfortune of having to write a “horrible note” just at play-time; and the boys treated it as a sort of insult to the whole family that Ida should have mistaken their governess’s name.
“Tell her you won’t go till she has it right,” said Sam; at which Annie made a vehement outcry of “No, no!” such as made them all laugh at her thinking him in earnest.
Susan’s note began—
My dear Ida,
We shuold—
But then perceiving that something was the matter with her word, Susan sat and looked at it, till at last, perceiving that her u and o had changed places, she tried putting a top to the u, and made it like an a; while the filling up the o made it become a blot, such as caught Bessie’s eye.
“O Susie, you won’t send such a thing as that up to Ida?”
“No—that would be a ‘horrible note,’” said her governess; and she ruled the lines again.