WANTED A STAMP.
"I am so old, so old, I can write a letter."
I had meant, you will remember, to write my letter to Pierson late at night when everybody was in bed. I had been afraid of writing it till I was sure everybody was asleep, for if the light in the nursery had been seen, there was no saying what Mrs. Partridge might not have done, she would have been so angry. So I settled in my own mind to get up in the middle of the night—quite in the middle—to write it. But nobody—no big person at least—will be surprised to hear that for all my plans and resolutions I never woke! The beginning and the middle of the night passed, and the end came, and it was not till the faint winter dawn was trying to make its way through the smoky London air that I woke up, to find it was morning—for a few minutes later I heard the stair clock strike seven.
At first I was dreadfully vexed with myself, then I began to think perhaps it was better. Even in the very middle of the night I might have been seen, and, after all, the letter would not have gone any sooner for having been written in the night instead of in the day-time. And in the day-time it was easy for me to write without minding any one seeing me, for Tom and I had our lessons to do for our tutor for the next day.
As soon as he had gone, therefore, I got my paper and set to work. I am not going to tell you just yet what I wrote to Pierson. You will know afterwards. You see I want to make my story as like a proper one as I can, in case aun—— oh, there I am again, like a goose, going to spoil it all! I meant to say, that I have noticed that in what I call proper stories, real book, printed ones, though it all seems to come quite smooth and straight, it is really arranged quite plannedly—you are told just a bit, and then you are quietly taken away to another bit, and though you never think of it at the time, you find it all out afterwards. Well, I wrote my letter to Pierson after Tom and I had finished our lessons for our tutor. I told Tom I had written it, and then—the next thing was how to get it stamped and taken to the post.
"I wish I had thought of buying a stamp when we were out this morning," I said. I have forgotten to tell you that in the morning, early, we had been out a short walk with Sarah. Only a very short one however, for Sarah had to hurry back, because of course Mrs. Partridge said she needed her, and our tutor was coming at eleven. Still we were very glad to go out at all.
"Sarah would have known; would you have minded?" said Tom.
Somehow it made me feel sorry and puzzled to hear him talk like that. We had always been used to being quite open about everything—we had never thought about any one knowing or not knowing about anything we did, except of course surprises about birthday presents and those kind of things. And now in one short week Tom seemed to have got into little underhand ways—of not wanting people to know, and that kind of thing. I had too, but somehow it made me more sorry for Tom than for myself—it was so unlike his bright open way.
"No," I said, "I wouldn't have minded. At least not for myself, only perhaps Mrs. Partridge would have scolded Sarah if she had found out we had been to the post-office."
"How shall we get it posted?" said Tom. "If we had a stamp I could run with it. I saw a box for letters a very little way round the corner."