Mrs. Urkirs brought her first a quarter of a sheet of letter paper, then a bit of blotting paper about an inch and a-half square, then one of those penny stone ink bottles which were invented for the confusion of mankind, together with an old steel pen—which she rubbed “soft,” as she said, on the hearthstone—and a quill that had apparently been in use for a couple or so of generations.
Out of these materials Phemie constructed her epistle. It seemed easier to write in the lonely farm-house than it had done at Marshlands—besides, she had no time to lose, no paper to waste; as the words were set down so they had to stand.
“Dear Basil,” she began, and she wrote closely that she might not run short of space. “Dear Basil, I have come all this way at Georgina’s request to say Harry is very ill, and to beg you to return home with me at once. I entreat of you not to let anything prevent your coming. Mrs. Urkirs kindly allows me to remain here till the messenger returns. I have directed him, if you are not at the Manor, to follow and give this to you.
“Phemie Stondon.”
It was the first letter she had ever written to Basil, and while she folded it up she thought about that fact.
After William had mounted and departed she still went on thinking, and sate by the fire considering how strange it was she never should have written to him before—that no necessity had arisen through all the years of their acquaintance for her to send him even the merest line. How wonderful it was that on her should devolve the duty of making the man she loved wretched!
“I do not know how I shall ever tell him,” she thought. “I do not.”
“And the child is very ill, ma’am, you say,” remarked Mrs. Urkirs at this juncture.
“He is dangerously ill,” answered Phemie.
“And what a journey it was for you,” went on the farmer’s wife, who—the excitement of looking up writing materials and of despatching William over—was beginning to think the business odd.