"'How did you get that letter?' asked my mother, not offering to touch it. 'You don't mean to say she gave you a letter!'
"'It came last Thursday. By post. It was addressed to me, Ernest Smith, Esq., at the Garage. It's a curious letter—asking about us. I can't make 'ead or tail of the whole business. I been thinking about it and thinking about it. Knowing 'ow set mother was about Fanny—I 'esitated.'
"His voice died away.
"'Somebody,' said Matilda in the pause that followed, 'had better read that letter.'
"She looked at my mother, smiled queerly with the corners of her mouth down, and then held out her hand to Ernest."
§ 4
"It was Matilda who read that letter; my mother's aversion for it was all too evident. I can still remember Matilda's large red face thrust forward over the supper things and a little on one side so as to bring the eye she was using into focus and get the best light from the feeble little gas-bracket. Beside her was Prue, with a slack curious face and a restive glance that went ever and again to my mother's face, as a bandsman watches the conductor's baton. My mother sat back with a defensive expression on her white face, and Ernest was posed, wide and large, in a non-committal attitude, ostentatiously unable to 'make 'ead or tail' of the affair.
"'Let's see,' said Matilda, and took a preliminary survey of the task before her....
"'My dear Ernie,' she says....
"'My dear Ernie: