Parker nodded.
“She was such a picture that I asked who she was, and found she was a high school mistress, the niece of old Cooper, the vet. She is going to be married to a schoolmaster, and go out to Canada with him. I don’t mind owning I was rather smitten myself, or I should not have taken the trouble.”
“She has left Cambridge,” said Parker slowly. “When I got out of the train half-an-hour ago she was getting in. Cooper was seeing her off.”
“Oh, don’t—don’t tell poor old Maitland,” I broke in. “Let him go on holding out his chest and thinking she sent him the roses. It won’t matter to her, if she is off to Canada, and never coming back any more. And it will do him such a lot of good.”
“I don’t mean to tell him—immediately,” said Barrett ominously. “I think with you he ought to have his romance. Now I know she is safely gone forever, though I don’t mind owning it gives me a twinge to think she is throwing herself away on a schoolmaster: but as she really can’t come back and raise a dust, gentlemen, I lay a proposal before the committee, that the lady who sent the roses should follow them up with a little note.”
The committee agreed unanimously, and we decided, at least Barrett decided, that he should compose the letter, and Parker, who was rather good at a feigned handwriting, should copy it out.
Parker and I wanted Barrett to make the letter rather warm, and saying something complimentary about Maitland’s appearance, but Barrett would not hear of it. I did not see where the fun came in if it was just an ordinary note, but Barrett was adamant. He said he had an eye on the future.
He put his head in his hands, and thought a lot and then scribbled no end, and then tore it up, and finally produced the stupidest little commonplace letter you ever saw with simply nothing in it, saying how much she had profited by his lectures and rot of that kind. I was dreadfully disappointed, for I had always thought Barrett as clever as he could stick. He said it was an awful grind for him to be commonplace even for a moment, and that by rights I ought to have composed the letter, but that it was no more use expecting anything subtle from me than a Limerick from an archbishop.
He proceeded to read it aloud.
“But how is he to know it is the person who sent him the roses?” said Parker, “and how is he to answer if she does not give him an address? Hang it all. He ought to be able to answer. Give the poor devil a chance.”