“Please can’t you scratch it out?” said the disconsolate Susan.
“I should not like to send a note with a scratch in it. Besides, yours is hardly civil.”
“No, indeed,” said Elizabeth; “don’t you know how people answer invitations, Susie? I’ll tell you. ‘Miss Susanna, and Miss Elizabeth, and Miss Annie Merrifield will be very happy to do the honour of dining with —’ Sam, why do you laugh at me always?”
“Why, you are telling Ida you will do her honour by dining with her.”
“People always do honour when they dine,” said Elizabeth. “I know they do.”
“They profess to receive the honour, not confer it, Bessie,” said Miss Fosbrook, laughing; “but I don’t think that is the model for Susie’s note. It would be as much too formal as hers was too blunt.”
“Must I do it again?” said Susan. “I had rather not go, if it is to be such a plague.”
“Indeed, I fear you must, Susie. It is quite needful to learn how to write a respectable note; really a more difficult thing than writing a long letter. I am sorry for you; but if you were not so careless in your letters to Mamma this would come more easily to you.”
But this time Miss Fosbrook not only ruled another sheet, but wrote, in fair large-hand on a slate, the words, that Susan might copy them without fresh troubles:
We are much obliged to your Mamma for her kind invitation, and shall have much pleasure in coming with Miss Fosbrook to dine with you and spend the day. I am sorry to say that Mamma was not quite so well when last we heard. Her address is—No. 12,—St., Grosvenor-place.