My Dear Wilks,—I hope that, under your excellent corps of nurses and guardian angels, you are gradually recovering from your Falstaffian encounter with Ancient Pistol. Don't let Miss Du Plessis see this or she'll faint. I had a toughish ride to Collingwood, and part of the way back, the latter at the suggestion of Hickey Bangs. If I were as plucky for my size as that little fellow is, I could face a regiment. He got the prisoner safely caged, which is the proper thing to say about gaol birds. I came down with him and his select party this morning, meeting Captain and Mrs. Thomas and The Crew on the way. They wanted me to go on a cruise. The kindness of the whole Carruthers family is like the widow's curse; it's inexhaustible. Having been badly sold, however, over a Lamb, and cheap, too, I was not eligible for more sail. I write this, Wilks, more in sorrow than in anger, but I do hanker after those jolly Bridesdale days. Mrs. Marsh received me cordially, but not in character; she was the reverse of martial.——
"Really, Farquhar, this is very terrible," said Miss Du Plessis, laughing; "I hardly know whether to go on. Who knows what dreadful things may be before us?"
"The taste, Cecile, is shocking; otherwise any child might read his letters."
"I left off at 'martial.'"
I went to the office, very unlike the Squire's, and pulled White off his stool before he knew I was there. He told me I had just come in the nick of time, for he wants to go to some forsaken watering place down the Gulf—as Madame Lajeunesse said "Law baw"—and that immediately. So, I get my two weeks next month, by which time I hope to have got that next of kin matter straightened out. Then, if I'm let, I'll go up and have my golf with Mr. Errol on his links. How are his links matrimonial progressing, and Perrowne's, not to mention those of Ben Toner, Timotheus, yourself, and other minor personages? Will you commission me to buy the ring?——
"Really, dear, I think I must stop."
"Please do not, dear; there is not much more, is there?"
"Not much, but it is so personal!"
The York Pioneers are having an exhibition of antiques; couldn't you get somebody to send down our two knapsacks, it seems such an age since we started them? Ask Miss Du Plessis and Miss Carmichael what they meant giggling at them at the Brock Street station and on the train that Tuesday morning.——
"Farquhar, did he, did you think it was Marjorie and I who did that, what he calls giggling?"