I rang the bell, and asked for Miss Maud Reade; and the servant who opened the door, and who, I felt sure, was the Williamson who was afraid of the blunderbuss, showed me into the drawing-room. There was no one there, for they were all at tea.
This was my first entrance into Laurence’s home; and I was so much agitated between pleasure at being in the house he lived in and shame at feeling that by some of the inhabitants at least, if they knew all, I should be looked upon as an unwelcome intruder, that I sank into a chair and buried my face in my hands. It was a very comforting thought, though, that I was sitting on a chair that Laurence must certainly have sat upon; and then I wondered which was his favorite, and tried one that I thought likely, to see if any instinct would tell me if I were right. I had not made up my mind on that point when the door opened and Miss Maud Reade came in.
She was a girl of about sixteen, with a weak but not disagreeable face; and she shook hands with me rather timidly, but not unkindly.
“Mrs. Manners asked me to bring you these tracts for your district, Miss Reade. She has marked some for people she thinks them specially suitable for,” said I, giving her the packet.
“Thank you; it is very kind of you to take so much trouble,” said she.
“Oh, it is no trouble at all!” I answered.
There was a pause of rather awkward constraint; and then I said in a whisper—
“Laurence—your brother—told me to come and see you, and to ask you to put a—a letter from me to him inside yours. He said I was to tell you to remember your promise, and he would remember his; he underlined that.”
Miss Reade’s constraint broke up at once, and she grew as much excited and as mysterious as I.
“Did he? Then he hasn’t forgotten!” she said, in a hissing whisper. “I suppose you know what it is; it’s about getting Mr. Reynolds to come here next winter. Oh, do keep him up to it! I’ll do anything in the world for you—that won’t get me into trouble with mamma or Alice—if you will!”