“Yes, we made so bold. It was the nearest his size you see, missy dear.”
“Well, good night again, Gervais,” said Claudia as she left the room. “I do hope you will sleep well.” Jerry smiled back a good night. He seemed in better spirits now.
“Isn’t he a nice little fellow?” she could not help saying to Mrs Ball.
“And quite the little gentleman,” said the housekeeper. “But he seems delicate, poor child. Just to think of it—what a mercy that Stobbs’s boy was coming up that way, and that he had a lantern. For all that the snow had stopped, he’d have been dead before morning. I don’t like to think of it—at our very door, so to say, Miss Claudia, and us with no thought of it. But there—my lady’s just going down to dinner.”
Lady Mildred was very silent that evening. Her mind seemed full of many things, and Claudia, after one or two attempts at conversation, thought it best to give it up. Not very long after dinner the groom returned from Wortherham with a note addressed to Miss Meredon. He had found, so he informed his friends in the servants’ hall, the family at Norfolk Terrace in a fine taking about the boy.
“They were sending out in all directions,” he said. “The poor lady looked like dead, and the young ladies were crying fit to break their hearts. I never see such a sight. The other young gentlemen had been out skating on Gretham pond, and they thought as this one had got home hours before, as he should have done. I’m almost sure as it was he as stopped our young lady when we was a-driving home this afternoon.”
“Stopped our young lady!” exclaimed Ball in surprise.
“Oh, it was just some message about the school. The Waldron young ladies goes where Miss Meredon does,” said the groom. And as no more was said about the matter, Jerry’s and Claudia’s secret remained their own.
The note was from Charlotte. It scarcely bore traces of the agitation described by the groom.
“Dear Miss Meredon,” it began,—
“My father and mother wish me to thank Lady Mildred most sincerely for her kindness to my brother Gervais. They also thank you for writing to tell us of his safety. We were becoming very uneasy about him. My father will go out early to-morrow, and hopes to be able to bring him home in a close carriage. He and my mother regret exceedingly the trouble all this must have caused you.
“I remain,—
“Yours sincerely,—
“Charlotte Waldron.”