"No, open it at once, Carrie. If he does say, 'send Bob on by the first vessel,' there is not likely to be one before he goes in the Antelope. Besides, that is all the more reason why he should go for a cruise, before he starts back for that grimy old place in Philpot Lane. We may as well see what the old gentleman says."
"I won't open mine till you have read yours, Carrie," Bob said. "I mean to go the cruise, anyhow; but if he says I must go after that, I will go. If he had been the old bear I used to think him, I would not mind it a snap; but he has been so kind that I shall certainly do what he wants."
Bob sat, with his hands deep in his pockets, watching his sister's face with the deepest anxiety as she glanced through the letter; Gerald standing by, and looking over her shoulder.
"The old gentleman is a brick!" Gerald, who was the first to arrive at the end, exclaimed. "I wish I had had such a sensible old relative, myself, but--barring an aunt who kept three parrots and a cat, and who put more store on the smallest of them than she did on me--never a relative did I have, in the world."
"Oh, tell me that afterwards!" Bob broke in.
"Do tell me what uncle says, Carrie."
His sister turned to the beginning again and read aloud:
"My dear niece--"