Mrs Derwent hesitated.
“I really don’t know,” she said frankly. “You sometimes wrote for your grandfather to bankers and such people, didn’t you, Blanche? Can’t you remember?”
Blanche considered.
“I don’t recollect ever writing anything but ‘Sir’ or ‘Dear sir,’” she said.
The three looked at each other in perplexity.
Suddenly a bright idea struck Mrs Derwent.
“I will write it in the third person,” she said. “Mrs Derwent will be obliged, etc.”
“That is a capital plan,” said Blanche, and in a few minutes the letter was satisfactorily completed.
It read rather quaintly, notwithstanding the trouble that had been taken with its composition. The clerk in Messrs Otterson and Bewley’s small back office, whose department it was to open the letters addressed to the firm, glanced through it a second time and then tossed it over to young Mr Otterson, who was supposed to be learning the business as a junior in his father’s employ.
“Foreigners, I should say,” observed the clerk.