FACT, OR FACTOR
“Papa, I have brought you a wonderful letter,” cried Miss Janetta Upround, toward supper-time of that same night; “and the most miraculous thing about it is that there is no post to pay. Oh, how stupid I am! I ought to have got at least a shilling out of you for postage.”
“My dear, be sorry for your sins, and not for having failed to add to them. Our little world is brimful of news just now, but nearly all of it bad news. Why, bless me, this is in regular print, and it never has passed through the post at all, which explains the most astounding fact of positively naught to pay. Janetta, every day I congratulate myself upon such a wondrous daughter. But I never could have hoped that even you would bring me a letter gratis.”
“But the worst of it is that I deserve no credit. If I had cheated the postman, there would have been something to be proud of. But this letter came in the most ignominious way—poked under the gate, papa! It is sealed with a foreign coin! Oh, dear, dear, I am all in a tingle to know all about it. I saw it by the moonlight, and it must belong to me.”
“My dear, it says, 'Private, and to his own hands.' Therefore you had better go, and think no more about it. I confide to you many of my business matters: or at any rate you get them out of me: but this being private, you must think no more about it.”
“Darling papa, what a flagrant shame! The man must have done it with no other object than to rob me of every wink of sleep. If I swallow the outrage and retire, will you promise to tell me every word to-morrow? You preached a most exquisite sermon last Sunday about the meanness and futility of small concealments.”
“Be off!” cried the rector; “you are worse than Mr. Mordacks, who lays down the law about frankness perpetually, but never lets me guess what his own purpose is.”
“Oh, now I see where the infection comes from! Papa, I am off, for fear of catching it myself. Don't tell me, whatever you do. I never can sleep upon dark mysteries.”
“Poor dear, you shall not have your rest disturbed,” Dr. Upround said, sweetly, as he closed the door behind her; “you are much too good a girl for other people's plagues to visit you.” Then, as he saddled his pleasant old nose with the tranquil span of spectacles, the smile on his lips and the sigh of his breast arrived at a quiet little compromise. He was proud of his daughter, her quickness and power to get the upper turn of words with him; but he grieved at her not having any deep impressions, even after his very best sermons. But her mother always told him not to be in any hurry, for even she herself had felt no very profound impressions until she married a clergyman; and that argument always made him smile (as invisibly as possible), because he had not detected yet their existence in his better half. Such questions are most delicate, and a husband can only set mute example. A father, on the other hand, is bound to use his pastoral crook upon his children foremost.
“Now for this letter,” said Dr. Upround, holding council with himself; “evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like a gazette itself.”