While Mrs. Walter Scott was resting, Roger’s letters were brought in. There was one for Frank, which he carried to his own room, and one for Magdalen, who broke the seal at once and screamed with delight as Roger’s photograph met her view. He had had it taken for her in Dresden, and hoped it would afford her as much pleasure to receive it as hers had given him. He did not say that he thought her position stiff, and her dress too old for her, though he had thought it, and smiled at the prim, old-womanish figure, sitting so erect in the high-backed chair. But he would not willingly wound any one, much less the little girl who had picked berries in the hot sun to pay for the picture. So he thanked her for it, and enclosed his own, and gave his consent to the Charlestown arrangement, and asked again that some competent person should take charge of her wardrobe, which he wanted in every respect “to be like that of other young girls.” He underscored this line, and Hester, who read the letter after Magdalen, felt her blood tingle a little, and knew that her day for dressing Magdalen was over. As for Magdalen, she was too much engrossed in Roger’s picture to think much of the contents of the letter.
“Oh, isn’t he splendid-looking; but I should be awfully afraid of him now,” she said, as she went in quest of Frank.
She found him in his room, with a disturbed, disappointed look upon his face. Roger had not made him a rich man on his twenty-first birthday. He had only ordered that six thousand dollars should be paid to him instead of five, as mentioned in the will, and had said that inasmuch as Frank had another year in college the four hundred should be continued for the year and increased by an additional hundred, as seniors usually wanted a little spending money. Frank’s good sense told him that this was more than he had a right to expect, that Roger was and always had been very generous with him; but he knew, too, that he was owing here and there nearly a thousand dollars, while, worse than all, there was for sale in Millbank the most beautiful fast horse, which he greatly coveted and had meant to buy, provided Roger came down handsomely. Knowing that horses had been his father’s ruin and his grandfather’s aversion, Frank had abstained tolerably well from indulging his taste, which was decidedly toward the race-course. But he had always intended to own a horse as soon as he was able. According to the will, he could not use for that purpose any of the five thousand dollars left to him. That was to set him up in business, though what the business would be was more than he could tell. He hated study too much to be a lawyer or doctor, and had in his mind a situation in some banking house where capital was not required, and with his salary and the interest of what Roger was going to give him he should do very well. That interest had dwindled down to a very small sum, and in his disappointment Frank was accusing Roger of stinginess, when Magdalen came in. She saw something was the matter, and asked what it was, at the same time showing him Roger’s picture, at which he looked attentively.
“Foreign travel is improving him,” he said. “He looks as if he hadn’t a care in the world; and why should he have, with an income of twenty or twenty-five thousand a year? What does he know of poverty, or debts, or self-denials?”
Frank spoke bitterly, and Magdalen felt that he was blaming Roger, whose blue eyes looked so kindly at him from the photograph.
“What is it, Frank?” she asked again; and then Frank told her of his perplexities, and how much he owed, and how he had expected more than a thousand dollars from Roger, and, as he talked, he made himself believe that he was badly used, and Magdalen thought so, too, though she could not quite see how Roger was obliged to give him money, if he did not choose to do so.
Still she was very sorry for him, and wished that she owned Millbank, so she could share it with the disconsolate Frank.
“I mean to write to Mr. Roger about it, and ask him to give you more,” she said, a suggestion against which Frank uttered only a feeble protest.
As he felt then, he was willing to receive aid by almost any means, and he did not absolutely forbid Magdalen to write as she proposed; neither, when she spoke of the will, and her intention to continue her search for it, did he offer any remonstrance. He rather encouraged that idea, and his face began to clear, and, before dinner was announced, Magdalen heard him practising on his guitar, which had been sent from New York by express, and which Hester likened to a “corn-stock fiddle.”
Mrs. Walter Scott came down to dinner, very neatly dressed in a pretty muslin of a white-ground pattern, with a little lavender leaf upon it, her lace collar fastened with a coral pin, and coral ornaments in her ears. Her hair was curling better than usual, and was arranged very becomingly, while her long train swept back behind her and gave her the air of a queen, Magdalen thought, as she stood watching her. She was very gracious to Magdalen all through the dinner, and doubly, trebly so after a private conference with Frank, who told her of his disappointment, and what Magdalen had said about writing to Roger, as well as hunting for the will. Far more shrewd and cunning than her son, who, with all his faults, was too honorable to stoop to stratagem and duplicity, Mrs. Walter Scott saw at once how she could make a tool of Magdalen, and by being very kind and gracious to her, play into her own hands in more ways than one. Accompanying Roger’s letter was a check for five hundred dollars, which Hester was to use for Magdalen’s wardrobe, and for the payment of her bills at school as long as it lasted. When more was needed, more would be sent, Roger said; and he asked that everything needful should be furnished to make Magdalen on an equality with other young girls of her age. Here was a chance for Mrs. Walter Scott. She had good taste. She knew what school girls needed. She could be economical, too, if she tried, she said with her sweet, winning way; and if Mrs. Floyd pleased, she would, while at Millbank, relieve her entirely of all care of Magdalen’s dress, and see to it herself.