[188]
]“Have you, dear one?” the mother said, rather abstractedly; “is it another letter to me?”
Dolly shook her head. Letters were very common things. She and Phyl were always writing them and posting them, for reading at all hours of the day, in their mother’s pocket. There were two there at the present time awaiting reading.
“My dearest Mama” (Dolly wrote),
“Isn’t it a lovely day? I love bright days when the little birds go twitter-tweet and the sun laughs and the flowers look like pink and red fires all over the garden. Jennie is not very well to-day; I wish we were going to the seaside, then she would soon be well! Oh I do love the sand, when it feels warm and crunchy, and you can let it go sliping, sliping through your fingers and the weeney bits of silver and gold and diamonds shine in the sun. Oh I wish we were there padling in the frothy waves and making houses with the sand and little shells.
“I remain,
“Your lovingest of loving daughters,
“Dolly.”
“Darling old Mother” (said Phyl),
“I’ve been reading such a lovely story, it was on the paper that came wrapped round the ironing. Geraldine Montmorency was going to be married to the Duke of something—I can’t remember his [189] ]name—and she was very proud and only had black hair and there was a dear little governess and she had golden hair and she was ever so sweet and the children were horrid to her and Lady Geraldine used to be proud and haughty to her but the Duke kept noticing her and one day when he was walking in the wood he saw her sitting crying on the bank of a streme and all her beautiful golden hair had come undone and was streming down her back. And he asked her what was the matter and she wouldn’t tell him. And he said ‘Darling’ in a hoarse whisper and begged her to speak and took her little hand in his great broad one. And she kept on crying and he kept on begging her. And then she put her little head on his strong shoulders and told him she was weping because he was going to marry the haughty Lady Geraldine. And he said he wouldn’t because he didn’t love her a bit and was only going to marry her because he was impoverished and there were mortgages on the estate—what are mortgages, mother? And so instead he eloped with the governess, and it turned out she was the real Lady Geraldine and she had been changed in her cradle for the other Lady Geraldine who was only a common farmer’s daughter now.
“Oh, it was such a lovely story!