“Yes; I am going out with Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.”
“You are going, perhaps, to shops to buy things?”
“Yes. Do you want me to bring you in some chocolates?”
“Oh! that would be vare nice; but if you would, with your own letter, put this into the post also?”
As she spoke she gave me a letter addressed in the somewhat thin and pointed hand which most German girls use, and which I so cordially detested.
“It is to Heinrich,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you; but your heart is warm, and—he suffers.”
“But why should I post it? Will you not take it downstairs and put it with the other letters in the letter-box?”
The delicate colour flew to her cheeks; her eyes were brighter than usual.
“Heinrich would not then receive it,” she answered. “You will post it—it is nécessaire for him that he gets it soon; he is in need of comfort. You will, will you not?”
I really hardly thought about the matter. I did not know why, but it did not occur to me that Riki was asking me to do anything underhand or outside the rules. She laid the letter on the table and flew away. I had just finished my own; I put it into an envelope and addressed it, and taking Riki’s letter also, I put on my outdoor things and went downstairs to meet Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.