The deference with which he touched his cap informed her fully as to the amount of knowledge possessed by the Flagg household. He unbuttoned, one after the other, his overcoat, his inner coat, his waistcoat, and from the deepest recess in his garments produced a sealed letter; his precautions in regard to it attested the value he put on a communication from the master to the master’s granddaughter.
The envelope was blank.
The men of the shift that had been relieved stood about her in a circle. The arrival of the bays was an event which matched the other sensational happenings of the crowded day, and she was conscious that, without meaning to be disrespectful, the men were hankering to be taken wholly into her confidence—were expecting that much favor from her.
Granddaughter of Echford Flagg she might be—but more than all she was one of the crew, that season, a companion who had inspired them, toiled with them, and triumphed with them. If any more good news had come they, as friends, were entitled to know it, their expressions told her. They were distinctly conveying to her their notion that she should stand there and read the letter aloud.
The hand which clutched the missive was trembling, and she was filled with dread in spite of the consoling thought that she had achieved so much. She was afraid to open the letter and she escaped out of the circle of inquiring faces and hid herself in her tent; even the crude flourish of importance displayed by the manner of Jeff in delivering the communication to her had its effect in making her fears more profound. The whims of old age—Flagg had dwelt on the subject! She remembered that when she was in the big house with Latisan, her grandfather had beat on the page of the Bible and had anathematized the ties of family in his arraignment of faults. He had been kind, after his fashion, when she was incognito, but now that he knew——
She ripped the envelope from the letter and opened the sheet; it was a broad sheet and had been folded many times to make it fit the envelope.
It was more like rude print than handwriting. At first she thought that her grandfather had been able to master a makeshift chirography with his left hand. But boldly at the top of the sheet, as a preface of apology, was this statement: “Dicktated to Dick and excuse looks and mesteaks. Hese a poor tool at writtin.”
Crouching on her bed of boughs, the sheet on her knees, her hands clutched into her wind-rumpled hair above her temples, she read the letter which her grandfather had contrived with the help of his drafted amanuensis.
To my Grand-daughter. He have to use short words and few. Dick is slow and can’t spel.
Lida’s thoughts were running parallel with her reading, and she remembered that, in those letters of hideous arraignment which she had found in her mother’s effects, Echford Flagg’s own spelling was fantastically original. But under the layers of ugly malediction she had found pathos: he said that he’d had no schooling of his own, and on that account had been led to turn his business over to the better but dishonest ability of Alfred Kennard.