“Will you let us see it?”
“For what reason?”
“Because it seems to have made mischief. There is something wrong somewhere, and I, for one, don’t know where; but I should like to. If I see what she has said, then I can tell just how to straighten it out.”
Ruth was sorely puzzled; but she smiled at Octave’s ingenuous confession that she desired to fix things up to suit the occasion; yet some way she did not misconstrue it, nor in any degree include her favorite in the general blame.
“Thee can read the letter if thee chooses; read it aloud. But thee is not likely to make much sense out of it. I could not, therefore I came home.”
Miss Kinsolving took the letter from her satchel and gave it to Octave, who attempted to read it aloud, as she had been directed. But the feat, for that fun-loving girl, was an impossibility. She would enunciate a few word and then stop to laugh, which, in itself, would have been confusing, had the epistle been most carefully worded; but, composed as it was and ambiguous in the extreme, the others found the suspense more than they could endure; so it was finally handed over to Content, and she managed to get through it after a fashion.
“But what does it all mean?” asked that girl, smilingly.
“It means, as far as I can translate it, that there has been some strange occurrence here. Something that would not have happened if mother and I had been at home. I have come here, as I told thee, to find out what it is. Paula, thee is the eldest. What has happened that should not?”
Paula did not answer. Her eye unconsciously flew to Octave, and then dropped upon the carpet. Her new habit of self-denial would not allow her to convict her sister.
Ruth frowned. “What is it, Content?”