“Her brother—that’s all I know,” Rex said, adding that he had never inquired about her family relations and she might have more than one brother for aught he knew.
“Quite right,” Colin responded. “There’s nothing to hinder her having a dozen if she likes. Queer, though, we never heard Tom speak of him. I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to square up to her before she went. Here you’ve let the time run to waste and now she’s gone, and that brother may die and she go into black, and the very old Harry be to pay before you see her again. Rex, my boy, you haven’t used her fair.”
Some such thought was in Rex’s mind, and he said, rather humbly, “I’m afraid I have been rather slow and half-hearted; but what can I do now?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, unless you write her a letter. George of Uxbridge! That’s just the checker!” Colin exclaimed, delighted with his bright idea. “Write and tell her what a laggard you have been. That will chirp her up a bit with her sick brother. Don’t put it off, but begin at once after lunch, which I think is ready now.”
Rex had not much appetite for lunch. The reprieve, which had been so welcome, bade fair not to last long. And then he didn’t know what to say. He had never written to a woman in his life except once to his laundress asking where a part of his washing had gone to and why she tore his shirts so badly. That had been easy to do, because he was indignant that his shirts were torn, and out of five pairs of socks, only one pair had been returned, and that was not his, or mated either. He could write to Bridget O’Hara about his socks and shirts, but writing to Irene was a different matter. Hers must be a love-letter, or the semblance of one, and he felt himself wholly inadequate to the task. Once he thought to consult Colin, but remembering the old man’s advice with regard to his lovemaking, he changed his mind and decided to try and see what he could do alone.
“If Tom were only here to start me,” he thought, as he took up his pen and a sheet of dainty note paper with his monogram in the corner. It was very easy to write “Oakfield, Aug. ——” but what to say next was a puzzler. Finally he wrote: “My dear Irene,” and then stopped and stared at it, with a feeling that it was quite too familiar. He had never called her Irene, and he didn’t know as she was his “dear.” He must think about it. He liked her and he supposed she would be his wife, and in time very dear to him. But now “My dear” was a little too strong with Irene attached to it. Taking another sheet he began: “Miss Irene Burdick,” but that was quite too formal and this second sheet followed the first into the waste basket. He had only one left of that particular kind and could not afford to spoil that. So he practised on a less expensive sheet till he decided that “Dear Miss Burdick,” which meant nothing, as dear was a common mode of expression, would do, and began to write, sweating like rain, weighing every word, and feeling that the hardest work he had ever done was writing that letter, which in a way was intended as a proposal.
“Dear Miss Burdick,” he wrote, “I am very sorry for the illness of your brother, which necessitated your leaving so suddenly, just as I was about to speak of something I ought to have spoken of before, and should, but for my natural nervousness or shyness, or whatever you may choose to call it, together with a doubt as to what were your feelings on the subject. Believe me, Miss Burdick, I would not on any account try to persuade you to think favorably of the plan if your heart is not in it. I am aware that you are placed in a very delicate position, which I regret as much as you possibly can.”
Here Rex stopped suddenly, with a feeling that it would never do to say that he regretted the relation in which he stood to Irene. He had made a horrid blunder and used up his last sheet of fine note paper.
“Oh, for Tom, or somebody,” he groaned, and the somebody came in the person of Colin, who knocked at the door. “Oh, come in, come. I am glad to see you,” Rex said, changing his mind with regard to consulting Colin. “I am writing to Miss Burdick and have spoiled three sheets of my best note paper, and have told her she can not regret the peculiar relations in which we stand to each other more than I do. What do you think of that?”
“I think you are an imbecile, or crazy,” Colin said. “I could do better, and I never wrote a love-letter in my life.”