They had written three or four times to Mrs. Tregonell, letters running over with affection, fondly hoping for an invitation to Mount Royal; but the answers had been in Jessie Bridgeman's hand, and the last had come from Zurich, which seemed altogether hopeless. They had sent Christmas cards and New Year's cards, and had made every effort, compatible with their limited means, to maintain the links of friendship.
"I wish we could afford to send her a New Year's gift, or a toy for that baby," said Mopsy, who was not fond of infants. "But what could we send her that she would care for, when she has everything in this world that is worth having. And we could not get a toy, which that pampered child would think worth looking at, under a sovereign," concluded Mop, with a profound sigh.
And so the year wore on, dry, and dreary, and dusty for the two girls, whose only friends were the chosen few whom their brother made known to them—friends who naturally dropped out of their horizon in Captain Vandeleur's absence.
"What a miserable summer it has been," said Dopsy, yawning and stretching in her tawdry morning gown—one of last year's high-art tea gowns—and surveying with despondent eye the barren breakfast-table, where two London eggs, and the remains of yesterday's loaf, flanked by a nearly empty marmalade pot, comprised all the temptations of the flesh. "What a wretched summer—hot, and sultry, and thundery, and dusty—the cholera raging in Chelsea, and measles only divided from us by Lambeth Bridge! And we have not been to a single theatre."
"Or tasted a single French dinner."
"Or been given a single pair of gloves."
"Hark!" cried Mopsy, "it's the postman," and she rushed into the passage, too eager to await the maid-of-all-work's slipshod foot.
"What's the good of exciting oneself?" murmured Dopsy, with another stretch of long thin arms above a towzled head. "Of course it's only a bill, or a lawyer's letter for pa."
Happily it was neither of these unpleasantnesses which the morning messenger had brought, but a large vellum envelope, with the address, Mount Royal, in old English letters above the small neat seal: and the hand which had directed the envelope was Christabel Tregonell's.
"At last she has condescended to write to me with her own hand," said Dopsy, to whom, as Miss Vandeleur, the letter was addressed. "But I dare say it's only a humbugging note. I know she didn't really like us: we are not her style."