“Very respectfully yours, Randolph Hay.”
The curate rushed out of the study and into the room where his wife sat sewing in an avalanche of infirm linen and exclaimed:
“Hetty, we need never leave the rectory! I have got the Haymore living! Read that, and thank the Lord!”
CHAPTER XVII
A MEMORABLE JOURNEY
Yes, it was true! Randolph Hay, the rightful heir, was in full possession of Haymore. He had also entered into his estate with much more ease than could have been anticipated either by himself, his friends or his lawyers.
To explain how this happened, a brief summary of events is necessary.
It will be remembered that Ran Hay, with his young bride, Judy, and a small party of friends, sailed on November the 29th from New York by the steamship Boadicea, hound for Liverpool.
Ran, Judy and Will Walling had staterooms in the first cabin; Mike, Dandy and Longman had berths in the second cabin.
This arrangement, on the part of the three last mentioned, was much against the will of Ran, who would gladly have provided his brother-in-law and his two friends with the best accommodations the ship afforded, but that from very delicacy of feeling toward them he could not offer to do so. Besides, he knew that all three of these men had money enough to pay for a first-class passage each, had they desired it, but that for prudential reasons Dandy and Longman did not choose to squander their savings in that needless manner, and that Mike cast in his lot with his two friends; and so their little party voyaged in the plain but clean and wholesome second cabin.
There could not, however, be much communication between the three in the first cabin and the three in the second, though they met occasionally on the common ground of the forward deck.