The little maid stepped quickly out of the open window, and ran fleet as the wind across a beautifully kept lawn and in the direction where a horse’s quick steps were heard approaching.
Gabrielle was nearly as tall as her brother, with a stately bearing and a grave face.
“If father does decide on taking you to Europe, Rupert, I wish to say now that I am quite willing to stay here with Peggy. I don’t want to go to school at Melbourne. I would rather stay on here and housekeep, and keep things nice the way our mother would have liked. If Peggy and I go away, Belmont will have to be shut up and a great many of the servants dismissed, and that would be silly. I am thirteen now, and I think I am wise for my age. You will speak to father, won’t you, Rupert, and ask him to allow me to be mistress here while you are away.”
“If we are away,” corrected Rupert. “Ah! here comes Peggy, and the letter-bag, and doubtless a letter. What a good child you are, Peggy White!”
Peggy dashed the letter-bag with some force through the open window. Rupert caught it lightly in one hand, and detaching a small key from his watch-chain opened it. It only contained one letter, and this was directed to himself:
“Mr. Rupert Lovel,
“Belmont,
“Near Melbourne,
“Victoria,
“Australia.”
“A letter from England!” said Rupert. “And oh! Gabrielle, what do you think? It is—yes, it is from our little Cousin Philip!”
“Let me see,” said Gabrielle, peeping over her brother’s shoulder. “Poor, dear little Phil! Read aloud what he says, Rupert. I have often thought of him lately.”
Rupert smiled, sat down on the broad window-ledge, and his sister, kneeling behind him, laid her hand affectionately on his shoulder. A little letter, written with considerable pains and difficulty, with rather shaky and blotted little fingers, and quite uncorrected, just, in short, as nature had prompted it to a small, eager, and affectionate mind, was then read aloud:
“Dear Cousin Rupert: You must please forgive the spelling and the bad writing, and the blots (oh! I made a big one now, but I have sopped it up). This letter is quite secret, so it won’t be corrected, for mother doesn’t know that I am writing. Mother and I are in England, but she says I am not to tell you where we are. It isn’t that mother isn’t fond of you, but she has a reason, which is a great secret, for your not knowing where we are. The reason has something to do with me. It’s something that I’m to have that I don’t want and that I’d much rather you had. It’s a beautiful thing, with spiders, and rivers, and caterpillars, and wild ponies, and ghosts, and rattling armor, and a tower of winding stairs. Oh! I mustn’t tell you any more, for perhaps you’d guess. You are never to have it, although I’d like you to. We are not very far from the sea, and we’re going there to-morrow, and it is there I’ll post this letter. Now, I am quite determined that you and Gabrielle and Peggy shall know that I think of you always. Mother and me, we are in a beautiful, grand place now—very grand—and most enormous old; and I have two little girls to play with, and I have got a pony, and a white pup, and I am taught by a tutor, and drilled by a drill-sergeant, and I fish and play cricket with Kitty, only I can’t play cricket much, because of my side; but, Rupert, I want to say here, and I want you and Peggy and Gabrielle always and always to remember, that I’d rather be living with mother in our little cottage near Belmont, with only Betty as servant and with only Jim to clean the boots and do the garden, for then I should be near you; and I love you, Rupert, and Gabrielle, and Peggy, better than any one in the world except my mother. Please tell Peggy that I don’t think much of the English spiders, but some of the caterpillars are nice; and please tell Gabrielle that the English flowers smell very sweet, but they are not so bright or so big as ours, and the birds sing, oh! so beautiful, but they haven’t got such gay dresses. Good-by, Rupert. Do you shoot much? And do you ever think of me? And are you good to my little dog Cato?