[CHAPTER X]
'IT'S ANOTHER SNAIL'
It was the next morning at breakfast that another strange thing happened. It was when the letters came.
We did not get them quite so early as at home, for it would have brought the postman a good deal out of his way to come down to the Hut, so it had been arranged for him to leave them at the lodge, and for them to be sent on from there.
This morning there were only two: one for mamma—a long one, it seemed, but not a foreign one, as I saw by a glance at the thick paper while she was reading it. But I had not noticed anything about Taisy's, and when a queer kind of little gasp made me look round at her, my first thought was that there was bad news of papa, which some one had somehow sent first to her—Taisy—for her to 'break it,' as they say, to mamma.
And my heart began to beat furiously, and no wonder, I think, for Taisy was as white as the tablecloth, and was evidently on the point of bursting into tears.
'Taisy, Taisy,' I whispered. Luckily she was sitting next me, so that I could speak to her in a low voice without being overheard. 'Is it—oh, is it, anything wrong with papa?' and I felt myself clasping my hands together under the table in an agony of terror.
My face brought back Taisy's presence of mind.
'No, no,' she said. 'Nothing of that kind—nothing wrong really. I know I am very silly,' and already the colour was coming back to her cheeks, for she was not a nervous or delicate girl at all. 'It is only—oh, I must tell auntie first, and then you will understand the sort of fright I got.'