“Stay,” said Mr Sherwood. “This reminds me that I brought a letter last night for the new nursemaid; at least, I suppose so;” and he took a letter from his pocket, and laid it on the table.
“You don’t mean that you brought that home last night, and have kept it till this time?” said Miss Gertrude, with much surprise.
“Tut, tut, my child!” said her father, touching the hand outstretched to take the letter. She withdrew her hand without a word.
“You could not have been more indignant had the letter been for yourself. It is not such a terrible oversight,” said Mrs Lane, or Aunt Barbara, as she was commonly called, who had looked in on her way from church. “If it is like most of the letters of that sort of people, it would be little loss though she never got it. Such extraordinary epistles as I sometimes read for my servants!”
“This seems quite a respectable affair, however,” said Mr Seaton, reading the direction in Effie’s fair, clear handwriting:
Christina Redfern,
Care of J.R. Seaton, Esquire.
“That is a very pretty direction—very.”
“I am very sorry, and very much ashamed of my carelessness,” said Mr Sherwood. “I hope, Miss Gertrude, you will forgive me, and I will never do so again, as little boys say.”
But he did not look either very sorry or very much ashamed, Miss Gertrude thought, and she made no reply. The rather uncomfortable silence that followed was broken by a low voice at the door:
“Am I to take the children, Miss Gertrude?”