“Your loving brother,
“Harry.”
Here is Fred’s letter to Maggie.
“Dear old Midget,—Don’t I wish you were here that I might give you a good squeeze and hear you call out, ‘O Fred! you are cur-r-rushing me!’ I’ll play the bear in the matter of hugs, when I do get you back,—that is certain. By the way, there’s a mean chap leading a poor, old, black bear about the streets here, making him dance, and scrape a fiddle, and other jigs of that kind. It is not a bit of fun to see the poor, poky, old thing perform, and he must have been beaten ever so much before he could be taught. You can see that by the way he is frightened when his master lifts his stick. It’s a mean shame, so it is. Don’t you say so, Mag?
“What jolly times you are having! so are we for the matter of that. Uncle Ruthven is a regular brick,—though I always knew that,—and so are grandmamma and the colonel, and all the rest. School breaks up the twentieth of June, and then, hurrah! for the country. Uncle John has invited Tom Norris to go with us to Riverside, and stay all the time that we stay. First-rate in him, wasn’t it? Tom is the jolliest good boy I ever saw: you never catch him in the least thing that isn’t just up to the right, and yet he’s the best company and merriest fellow in the world. He keeps me out of a heap of mischief, many a time, dear, old chap! that’s so, I know. Dear, old, steady-going Hal! he often wonders at my tantrums, I know; but he’s good too, and it is awful hard work to keep out of scrapes in school when you’ve a quick temper like mine, and not too much thought. I’ll tell you a secret, Mag: I believe it has helped me a good deal to see you and Queen Bess take so much pains to cure yourselves of those two very faults,—you, with your carelessness, and Bessie, with her passionate temper. I thought it was a shame if you two little girls did it, that a great fellow like me shouldn’t. And for that reason I’m going to let you tell dear mamma some thing that will make her dear eyes dance. Mr. Peters called me to him this morning,—and I thought for sure I must be in some row, though I didn’t see what,—and he said he wanted to tell me that no boy in the school had improved in character, or taken so much pains with his faults, as I had during the last year. I don’t want to be puffed up, but didn’t I feel some pumpkins; but I could most have cried that mamma wasn’t home for me to tell the good news to. However, when I went home, there sat grandmamma, the dear, precious, old soul, so sweet and good and loving; so I just pitched into her and gave her the news, and a tight squeeze into the bargain. She was as pleased as could be, but then she isn’t mamma; so just you tell the darling mother, and bid her shut her eyes, and do you give her a good choke for me, just as I do, Ducky-Daddles! and see if she don’t gasp out, ‘Oh, my dear boy!’ and you write it to me, Mag. And tell papa, Mr. Peters told me if I turned out such a man as my father,—a true Christian, a perfect gentleman, and a thorough scholar,—no one could ask more for me. I never expect to be all that, but it’s something to have one’s father spoken of that way, and, Mag, do you believe, I just bawled. And old Peters—I’ll never call him that again if I remember, only it comes so handy—asked me to go of a little errand for him. I knew that it was just that he knew I didn’t want to go back to the school-room with red eyes, and I was all right again before I came back. He’s a jolly old soul, if he is strict. But I just tell you, you and her royal highness can take some of the credit to yourselves; for I know you have helped me without meaning it. And Uncle Ruthven is as pleased as any thing, and he said he had seen it himself, and he had meant to give me a handsome pony for taking pains with myself; but as papa had given me one when he gave Hal a watch just before you went away, he would let me say what the present should be.
“And so, Midget, I told him I should like him to give you and Bess the pony between you; and he said I had better take a couple of days to think it over, and he would give me leave to change my mind. I suppose he thinks I’ll slink out of it; but I shan’t, so you two may just count on a pony of your own. I guess there’ll be a side-saddle too, for Uncle Ruth don’t do things by halves. I’m awfully sleepy, and anybody but you would be tired of this long letter.
“Your loving brother,
“Frederick Talbot Bradford, Esq.”
Maggie answered her Uncle Ruthven’s letter the very next morning in these words:—