My dear Niece,
Yours of the 6th to hand, for which I thank you. I am willing to receive you and the boy as you suggest, at any date convenient to yourself, on a short visit. There will be no need for you to help in the shop, as the time will be so limited.
I have given much anxious thought and prayer to yourself and to your child, my dear Rose, left alone in worldly surroundings as I fear you are. If you have discovered the hollowness and falseness of mere earthly grandeur, turn your thoughts to that which never fails, if sought in true humbleness of spirit. I will gladly advise you to the best of my poor powers, but there is but One true Counsellor for us all.
Kindly advise later as to date and hour of arrival.
Yours, etc.,
Alfred Smith.
A certain lack of enthusiasm as to the projected visit, apparent in Uncle Alfred’s letter, no less than the careful underlining of his pietistic sentiments, recalled him with singular vividness to the mind of his niece as she read.
“It’ll be something, to get away from here,” she consoled herself.
After all, Uncle Alfred had nearly always been kind, in his own strange way. She and her mother had laughed at him, but Mrs. Smith had always steadily upheld Uncle Alfred’s claim to affection and gratitude, because for many years he had given them a home. And he had been nicer to Rose after her mother’s death, she remembered.
“And, anyway, he won’t talk about ‘plans for the day’ at breakfast every blessed morning, and I shall have Ces to sleep in my room again.” She laughed out loud for very joy at the thought. There was a foolish and inexplicable hope in her heart that if she and Cecil once got away from Squires, they need never go back there. To herself, Rose added in all honesty a modification of her ardent wish to cut adrift from everything that the Aviolets stood for:
“After all, I daresay Lord Charlesbury would look us up in London. And it would be much nicer to see him away from all of them.”