Janet’s eyes lit up, and it was a look more of encouragement than blame which she directed at her lover.
“You, Hendon?” said Mark, smiling.
“Yes; I want to get away, and begin differently. I’m—there, look here, Mark Heath; with a strong-minded chap like you, I know I could get on, doctoring or diamond-digging, or something of that kind. Hallo, what is it?”
“Letter, sir.”
“Letter? Why didn’t the boy bring it up?”
“He’s a-dusting the surgery, sir,” replied the maid, who seemed to have been engaged upon some cleansing business in which she had been worsted.
“For you, Hendon,” said Rich, who had taken the letter. “Is it from the hospital?”
“No, it isn’t from the hospital,” said Hendon quietly, as he knit his brow over the correctly-written formal letter, in which a firm of solicitors respectfully informed him that unless certain sums due on dishonoured bills were paid to them in a specified time, they were instructed by their client, Mr James Poynter, to take immediate proceedings for the recovery of the debt.
“Mark, old chap, the attack has begun;” and Hendon handed the letter to the former, who read it through.
“Let’s go down-stairs,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”