Your obedient servant,
Abby Bradford.
"What do you think of that?" I asked, as I finished Abby's letter, for I had read it aloud to the Mistress.
"Perhaps," said the Mistress, looking up from her embroidery, "we had better open the parcel."
A familiar twinkle colored her smile, that raised a momentary suspicion that she perhaps knew something more of the contents than she chose to tell. The advice was good, albeit deftly dodging my question, so I cut the wrappings and exposed a roll of fair manuscript. "It is a story," I remarked, after glancing over the pages, "a sort of historical fairy tale, I fancy. But, hold! what is this?" My eye had fallen upon some sentences that arrested attention, and I read several continuous pages.
The Mistress interrupted the reading: "Well, what has interested you? And what have you to say about the whole affair?"
"I have been reading here a curious adaptation of the habits of my spider pets, and it is neatly put. And here is another of the same sort." I turned to a chapter further on, and read with great satisfaction a few pages more. "Really," I exclaimed, "the natural history is good, and is fairly inwoven with the tale. I have changed my opinion of the work; it is evidently an attempt to bring out some of the most interesting habits of our American spider fauna by personifying them with the imaginary creatures of fairy lore. You want to know my opinion of the matter? As to the manuscript I shall not, of course, venture an opinion until I have read it with some care. As to the author—well, perhaps you can tell better than I. When did Abby write it?"
The Mistress waited a moment or two and then in her quiet way replied, "Pray, how should I know? Abby is of age, ask her; she can speak for herself."
Thus the affair of the Brownie records rested until I had gone over the manuscript more carefully. Then the Mistress was again consulted.
"Will you print the papers?" she asked.