“My dear Miss Meredon,” it began—
“I have asked Charlotte to let me write myself, to thank you for writing about me. I am better, thank you, but I am still in bed. The doctor says I may get up this afternoon, but I’m not sure that I’m inclined. It is so cold and I am so tired still; I wish it was summer again. I want to tell you that Charlotte is in very good spirits, and she is working hard, specially at German. I should like to see you again. Perhaps some day I could go to call on you when you come back, for I should like to thank Lady Mildred Osbert too for being so kind to me. Papa and mamma wish me to thank her for wanting to know how I was. I wish you a merry Christmas. I remain,—
“Yours truly,—
“G.T. Waldron.”
They were at breakfast when the letter came. Lady Mildred glanced at Claudia’s smiling face.
“Home news, I suppose, to make you look so sunshiny?” she said, in the half-teasing tone that Claudia had learnt not to mind.
“No, Aunt Mildred; it’s a letter from little Gervais Waldron,” she said, and after a moment’s imperceptible hesitation in which she had time to say to herself,—“there is nothing in it which would tell his secret,”—she handed it to Lady Mildred, who read it.
“Poor little fellow,” she said, “it doesn’t seem much as if he were in a very promising way; they should send him abroad for the rest of the winter. He looks to me just the sort of child that might be set up by it. I think it a cruel thing to send away hopeless invalids to those southern places, even if it prolongs their lives a little it too often deprives them of their homes and friends at the last. But it is a very different thing for a delicate child with no actual disease. In such a case it may give a start for life.”
Claudia listened with some surprise. Her aunt’s interest in the subject of this boy was not exactly the sort of thing that Lady Mildred’s usual ways would have led her to expect.
“I dare say it would be a very good thing—the best in the world for him,” she said. “But I am sure they could not possibly afford it.”
“Why? Are they so poor do you think?” said Lady Mildred quickly.
Claudia could not help laughing a very little. “Auntie,” she said, “people needn’t be desperately poor not to be able to send a child abroad for the winter. But I think the Waldrons are poorer than many families who yet would find it very difficult to do that.”
“How do you know—how can you judge? You’ve never been in their house?” said Lady Mildred sharply and almost suspiciously; “and I put you on your honour not to get intimate with the girl or with any of your schoolfellows.”