"Oh, I have no doubt there is quite a swarm of them. But they would be very undesirable acquaintances for you, my boy; and so I do not see that any good could be done by trying to find them."
"But there is the money my father left for aunt, if ever she should need it!" exclaimed the boy. "I have been thinking of that since I sat down here. Suppose aunt should want it just now! We ought to make sure of this, mother. Of course they may have got rich; there is no telling what may have happened; and they may now be rich, vulgar people, like the Stones."
"Herbert, why will you persist in saying the Stones are vulgar?" said his mother, rather angrily.
The boy laughed. "Because it is so plain to everybody. They are always trying to show off something or other. My aunt cannot be worse than the Stones; and if she is your sister, she could not be half so bad," he said, kissing his mother.
This gentle flattery appeased her, and the rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough.
Just before bed time he said, "Now, look here, mammy, I have one more spare day before I go back to school, and I'll give it to you to help with that bag, if you will promise not to bother Mrs. Ramsay about it. We will begin soon after breakfast in your morning-room. I know just how the thing ought to be done. You shall open the letters, and I will write down on a slip of paper the name of the person it came from, and just in a word or two what it was about, and then we will tie them up in packets, and give them over to Mrs. Ramsay. She may like to see them, by-and-bye, but there may be some business, she says, that ought to be attended to at once, so that some one must look over them."
Mrs. Milner would give no promise that night, but the weather helped Herbert in his plan, for the next morning proved to be a wet, windy day, that compelled them to stay indoors. And as soon as breakfast was over, the boy fetched the Gladstone-bag, and began turning out its contents upon the table.
"We shall forget the miserable weather now," he said, as he fetched a sheet of foolscap paper, and prepared to make his memoranda.
His mother sighed, but thought she might as well resign herself to the task, though she still felt that Mrs. Ramsay ought to do it herself.
Fortunately the letters all seemed short, and could be easily read, and so half a dozen memoranda were very quickly made of these. And then Mrs. Milner picked up one that seemed to require a great deal of reading before it could be understood.