"MY DEAR SIR,"
He wrote as much as this with great promptitude, and then, with his elbow on the table, fell to staring at his pretty young wife and drumming his fingers on his chin. Mary was sitting opposite her husband at the open window, working, or making a pretence of being occupied with some impossible fragment of Berlin wool–work, while she watched her husband.
"How pretty you look in that white frock, Polly!" said the soldier; "you call those things frocks, don't you? And that blue sash, too,––you ought always to wear white, Mary, like your namesakes abroad who are vouée au blanc by their faithful mothers, and who are a blessing to the laundresses for the first seven or fourteen years of their lives. What shall I say to Paulette? He's such a jolly fellow, there oughtn't to be much difficulty about the matter. 'My dear sir,' seems absurdly stiff; 'my dear Paulette,'––that's better,––'I write this to inform you that your client, Miss Mary March––––' What's that, Polly?"
It was the postman, a youth upon a pony, with the afternoon letters from London. Captain Arundel flung down his pen and went to the window. He had some interest in this young man's arrival, as he had left orders that such letters as were addressed to him at the hotel in Covent Garden should be forwarded to him at Milldale.
"I daresay there's a letter from Germany, Polly," he said eagerly. "My mother and Letitia are capital correspondents; I'll wager anything there's a letter, and I can answer it in the one I'm going to write this evening, and that'll be killing two birds with one stone. I'll run down to the postman, Polly."
Captain Arundel had good reason to go after his letters, for there seemed little chance of those missives being brought to him. The youthful postman was standing in the porch drinking ale out of a ponderous earthenware mug, and talking to the landlord, when Edward went down.
"Any letters for me, Dick?" the Captain asked. He knew the Christian name of almost every visitor or hanger–on at the little inn, though he had not stayed there an entire fortnight, and was as popular and admired as if he had been some free–spoken young squire to whom all the land round about belonged.
"'Ees, sir," the young man answered, shuffling off his cap; "there be two letters for ye."
He handed the two packets to Captain Arundel, who looked doubtfully at the address of the uppermost, which, like the other, had been re–directed by the people at the London hotel. The original address of this letter was in a handwriting that was strange to him; but it bore the postmark of the village from which the Dangerfield letters were sent.
The back of the inn looked into an orchard, and through an open door opposite to the porch Edward Arundel saw the low branches of the trees, and the ripening fruit red and golden in the afternoon sunlight. He went out into this orchard to read his letters, his mind a little disturbed by the strange handwriting upon the Dangerfield epistle.