“If you don’t eat them now, they’ll be cold in a minute,” she warned him.
“Oh, I’d forgotten! I must beg your pardon since you took so much trouble about them.”
He ate them slowly, as if performing some hard and solemn task. When he had finished his meal, Madge cleared the table.
“Is there anything else you would like?” she asked. “One of your books?”
“No, I––I don’t think I want to read, just 299 now. I––I am feeling rather––rather disturbed for the moment.”
“What’s the matter?” she inquired, solicitously.
“It’s this––this habit I’ve gotten into,” he said, “of having a––a nurse at my side. It seems very strange that she will soon be gone. I’ve learnt to depend so much on.... And Stefan is coming to take you away to Carcajou––and then over there to Dr. Starr’s. Then I believe I’m to go and stay with the Papineaus, till I can handle a frying-pan and an axe. The––the prospect is a dismal one.”
She took a little step towards him but he had bent over the letter and was directing it. When this was done he stared at it for a moment and, unsteadily, handed it to the girl, with the writing down.
“I––I would like you to deliver this for me,” he told her. “It is ever so important and––and our post-office isn’t very reliable, I’m afraid. But I know I can trust you.”
She looked at him in surprise and then she looked at the envelope. To her intense amazement she read: