Meanwhile all hands took to reading their letters. Some few were sad, but all the rest were filled with joy and hope.
Kep's heart was filled with feelings of love and gratitude as soon as his eyes fell upon the well-known handwriting of his sister.
In a former letter he had mentioned to her all about the photo of hers that the good and brave Dr. McTavish had shown him. It was he, Kep said, that had been the hero of her little romance in Italy.
And this was Madge's letter in return, or at least a portion of it. Kep had retired to the privacy of his own cabin and easy chair in order to read it.
"DEAR OLD KEP,--For you must, like myself, be getting old now. Would you believe it that I, your little sister, am on the borders of twenty, and not the green side of the border either, but the other. It was sweet of you to write me so long a letter. Quite brotherly too, and in some parts a bit bluff, but I loved it for all that.
"Do you know, Kep, that for dear Daddy's sake I was greatly tempted to let him sell me to the rich old man. I am often sorry for father. This villa is charmingly pretty, and its flowery lawns flow as it were, down almost to the edge of the cliff. But father sits in his chair sometimes for an hour thinking, thinking. I fill his meerschaum for him, and he dreams and dreams of his dear old home till he nods and sleeps.
"We have many neighbours; but though very kind, they are of the commoner middle classes, and though we don't entertain except to tea, I often have them and they me.
"The village where we live is on Cornish shores, and is well named Maretown (but the people don't sound the e, and pronounce it Mairtown). The beauty of the bay on an early summer morning is indescribable. Below the cliffs, which are yellowed o'er with scented furze and many a lovely wild flower, the wavelets break when the tide is high over the black rocks at the foot, with a strange murmur that seems to suit the cry of the sea-gulls.
"When the sea is back, it leaves long points of dark seaweed-covered rocks, with patches between of the yellowest of sand, and the long snow-like fringe of sea moans far away now.
"I'm often among the rocks, and find in pools such lots of darling funny wee fish and crabs and shells.