“Perfunctory—p, e, r, f, u, n, c, t—Eh! Rose, yonder’s Postie, with a letter,” cried Violet, out of breath.
“It’s sure to be from Harry, he’s always so thoughtful,” said the young wife; “run and get it, Violet. I wonder if he has seen the house yet—I wonder if he has settled when we’re all to go—I wonder—but to think of him writing again to-day! Poor Harry! he would think we would be anxious, Martha.”
“Here’s three; everybody but me gets a letter,” cried Violet, entering with her hands full. “Martha, Postie says this should have come yesterday, but it had no number; and here’s one from my uncle. May I open Uncle Sandy’s letter, Martha?”
But Violet’s question was not answered. Harry’s letter was a large one, a family epistle addressed to Martha, enclosed within the love-letter which Harry’s still fresh and delicate affection sent to his wife. But while Agnes ran over her’s alone, a flush of delight and expectation making her smile radiant, Rose looking over Martha’s shoulder, and Violet standing at her knee, possessed themselves of the contents of the larger letter; so that Agnes, roused at the end of her own to kindred eagerness about this, started up to join them, as Rose exclaimed: “A boat on the water,” and Violet cried “Eh, Agnes, a wee burn,” in the same breath.
And then Martha smilingly commanded the little crowd which pressed around her to sit down quietly, and hear her read; and Violet added with authority:
“Agnes, Rose, you’re to go away. Martha will read it out loud;” but, notwithstanding still obtruded her own small head between the letter of Harry and the eyes of her elder sister.
And Martha did read “out loud,” all the others still continuing to bend over her shoulder, and to utter suppressed exclamations as their eyes ran, faster than Martha’s voice, over the full page. The mall, the boat, the burn, the partitions to be thrown down, the windows to be opened, the painting and gilding and furnishing which filled Harry’s mind with occupation, produced the pleasantest excitement in the family. Those two girls, Agnes and Rose—for the wife was little more mature than her young sister—paused at the end of every sentence to clap their hands, and exclaim with pleasure; but Violet’s small head remained steady under shadow of Martha’s shoulder, and she read on.
“I have the accumulated rents of two years—nine hundred pounds—to begin with,” wrote Harry; “you may fancy how much improvement we may get out of such a sum as that; and I am resolved that the house shall be a pleasant house to us all, and like what a home should be, if anything I can do, will make it so. We must have a new boat, instead of this old crazy one, and will be obliged to have a vehicle of some kind. Violet must go to Stirling to school, so we’ll need a pony for her (Violet laughed aloud), and Agnes and Rose and you, my dear Martha, must have some kind of carriage; however, you shall decide yourselves about that. But this thousand pounds, you see, will enable us to begin in proper style, and that is a great matter.
I have just seen a family of Allenders in Stirling, respectable vulgar people, with a dissipated son, who took upon him to be more intimate with me than I was at all disposed for. I am afraid I shall be rude to this Gilbert Allenders, if he continues to press himself upon me; however, when you are all yonder, everything will go well.”
Poor Harry! It was a consolation to him to condemn Gilbert Allenders: it seemed to take a weight from his own conscience; disgust for his dissipated kinsman stood Harry in stead as disgust for dissipation itself, and he took the salve to his heart, and was comforted.