'DEAR FRANK,—As your mother is not very well, I intend to bring her down to Dolgelly for a few days. Take some nice quiet rooms where we can all be lodged together at less expense than at an hotel.
'Your affect. uncle,
'CHRISTOPHER WINTHROP.
'P.S.—I have some important news to give you, and should like you all to be at home when we arrive by the 12.50 train to-morrow.'
Frank read the letter out to the rest at breakfast, and then laid it quietly down by his plate.
'Snap,' he said, 'there is something wrong at home. I can't make out what the Admiral is always harping on economy for. Surely our mother' (and unconsciously there was a tone of pride in that 'our mother') 'can afford to go to any of these wretched little hotels if she likes. I shan't take rooms. It's all nonsense; I'm not going to have her murdered by Welsh cooks, especially if she is ill.'
No one having any explanation of the Admiral's letter to offer, or any objection to staying where they were, the conversation dropped, but the boys were restless and unhappy until the 12.50 train was clue in.
When that train pulled up with a jerk at the platform the three had already been waiting for it half an hour, for their impatience had made them early, and long habit had made the train late. As soon as they could find their mother and Admiral Chris the boys pounced upon them, and in the first burst of eager welcome the cloud vanished. But it reappeared again before the party reached the hotel, and the Admiral was as nearly angry as he knew how to be on finding that the rooms taken for himself and sister were, as usual, just the best in the hotel.
The dinner was a poor and spiritless affair, and Snap noticed that the old gentleman, instead of lighting a cigar after leaving the table, took at once to a pipe.
'Why, sir,' remonstrated Snap, 'you are false to your principles for the first time in my experience of you; I thought that you always told us that the cigar was a necessary appetiser, to be taken before the solid comfort of the evening pipe.'
'Nonsense, my boy, nonsense, I never said that. A cigar is a poor thing at best. Nothing like a pipe for a sailor,' blurted out the Admiral, looking annoyed at Snap's innocent speech, and glancing nervously in Mrs. Winthrop's direction, while over her sweet face a cloud passed as she too noticed for the first time this little change in her brother-in-law's habits.