“You need not go near the jam-making.”
“I must to-day. Last year Molly made a mistake in the quantity of sugar: and never could be brought to acknowledge it.”
“Molly—— There’s the letter-man,” broke off the Squire. “Run, lad.”
I went through the open glass-doors with all speed. Letters were not everyday events with us. In these fast and busy days a hundred letters are written where one used to be in those. It was one only that the man handed me now.
“That’s all this morning, Mr. Johnny.”
I put it beside the Squire’s plate, telling him it was from Sir John Whitney. There was no mistaking Sir John’s handwriting: the popular belief was that he used a skewer.
“From Whitney, is it,” cried he. “Where are my spectacles? What’s the postmark! Malvern? Oh, then, they are there still.”
“Belle Vue Hotel, Malvern.
“Dear Todhetley,
“Do take compassion upon a weary man, and come over for a day or two. A whole blessed week this day have I been here with never a friend to speak to, or to make up a rubber in the evening. Featherston’s a bad player, as you know, but I wish I had him here. I and my wife might take double dummy, for all the players we can get. Helen is engaged to be married to Captain Foliott, Lord Riverside’s nephew; and nobody has any time to think of me and my whist-table. Bring the boys with you: Bill is as moped as I am. We are at the Belle Vue, you see. The girls wanted to stand out for the Foley Arms: it’s bigger and grander: but I like a place that I have been used to.