"Does she wear shabby frocks?" said the mother. "I could help her in that matter, at all events, Ned. I might send her a great trunk–full of Letitia's things: she outgrows them before they have been worn long enough to be shabby."
The boy coloured, and shook his head.
"It's very kind of you to think of it, mother dear; but I don't think that would quite answer," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because, you see, John Marchmont is a gentleman; and, you know, though he's so dreadfully poor now, he is heir to Marchmont Towers. And though he didn't mind doing any thing in the world to earn a few shillings a week, he mightn't like to take cast–off clothes."
So nothing more was to be said or done upon the subject.
Edward Arundel wrote his humble friend a pleasant letter, in which he told John that he had enlisted his mother's sympathy in Mary's cause, and in which he spoke in very glowing terms of the Indian expedition that lay before him.
"I wish I could come to say good–bye to you and Miss Mary before I go," he wrote; "but that's impossible. I go straight from here to Southampton by coach at the end of this month, and the Auckland sails on the 2nd of February. Tell Miss Mary I shall bring her home all kinds of pretty presents from Affghanistan,––ivory fans, and Cashmere shawls, and Chinese puzzles, and embroidered slippers with turned–up toes, and diamonds, and attar–of–roses, and suchlike; and remember that I expect you to write to me, and to give me the earliest news of your coming into the Lincolnshire property."
John Marchmont received this letter in the middle of January. He gave a despondent sigh as he refolded the boyish epistle, after reading it to his little girl.
"We haven't so many friends, Polly," he said, "that we should be indifferent to the loss of this one."