Bessie Bradford's Prize

by Joanna H. Mathews

Rather startled by her voice and manner, the little one obeyed and returned to Lena's room with the letter.

But now she fell into difficulties. The door of the compartment into which Lena had told her to put the letter was hard to open; it stuck, and Elsie vainly struggled with it, for it would not yield. Meanwhile Letitia, hearing Hannah come up from the kitchen, had hurriedly returned to her post of duty. She exclaimed on finding the door between the rooms open and a draught of cold air sweeping through, and hastening to shut it, discovered Elsie still struggling with the door of the little closet.

"Well, did I ever!" exclaimed the nursery-maid. "You here in this cold draught, Miss Elsie; an' what'll Hannah say, I wonder?"

"I want to put this in here, and I can't open this door," said the loyal little soul, refraining from shifting the blame from her own shoulders, by saying that she had come on Lena's errand. Letitia went to her assistance, but the door was still obstinate, and before the letter was hidden it was made plain "what Hannah would say;" for the old nurse came bustling in in a transport of indignation at finding Elsie exposed to the risk of taking cold, for she was a very delicate child. She rated both her little charge and her assistant in no measured terms, especially the latter, who, as she said, "had not even had the sense to put down the windows on the child." She snatched the letter from Elsie's hand, the little girl repeating what she wanted to do with it, and bidding her at once to go back to the other room, gave a violent pull to the small door, which proved more successful than the efforts of her predecessors.

"What's all this fuss about putting the letter away, anyway?" she said, glancing at the unlucky document. "Bless me, if t'aint from Master Percy, an' to Miss Lena! Well, an' she never saying a word of it. What's she so secret habout it for?"

Now Hannah's chief stumbling-block was a most inordinate curiosity, and once aroused on the subject of that letter, was not likely to be laid to rest until it had received some satisfaction. She turned the letter over and over, scrutinizing it narrowly; but there was nothing to be learned from the address or the post-mark farther than that it was certainly from Percy, whose handwriting she well knew. Had she dared she would have opened it; but that was a thing upon which even she scarcely ventured, autocrat though she was within the nursery dominions. Also, Lena was rather beyond her rule since the Neville family had come to Colonel Rush's house.

Elsie had lost no time in escaping from the storm which her seeming imprudence had evoked, and the nursery maid had followed; the little girl reporting to her sister that Hannah had taken the letter from her and was putting it away. Poor Lena found her precautions of no avail, and she knew Hannah well enough to feel sure that she would be subjected to the closest questioning. She must brave it out now, and she forced herself to face it.

"I sent Elsie in there; it was my fault, not hers," she said, throwing down the gauntlet with an air of defiance which rather astonished Hannah.

"You know she oughtn't to go in that cold hair," said Hannah, sharply. "And why for couldn't you wait till me or Letitia came to put by your letter if you was in 'aste habout it? There," mollified by the look in the beautiful dark eyes, now so unnaturally large and pathetic through illness and suffering, which Lena turned piteously upon her without answering, "there, there, child; never mind now. Heat your breakfast, my dear, for you look quite spent and worn out. Ye've got a setback by yesterday's doin's that'll last a week. Come, now, Miss Lena, take this nice chicken an' put a bit of strength into you."

And the old woman bustled about, displaying to the best advantage the dainty breakfast she had brought to tempt the appetite of her young charge.