“Your affectionate father, George Stuart.”
“Deary me, Kennie,” said Miss Peppy, in some alarm, “I hope that nothing has happened! You seem so troubled that—”
“Oh! nothing of any consequence,” said Kenneth with a laugh, as he folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
“Ha! your lady-love is unkind,” cried Bella; “I know it is from her.”
“The writing is not lady-like,” replied Kenneth, holding up the back of the letter for inspection. “It is a gentleman’s hand, you see.”
“Ladies sometimes write what I may call a masculine hand,” observed the captain.
“You are quite right, Captain Bowels,” said Miss Peppy; “some write all angles and some all rounds. One never knows how one is to expect one’s correspondents to write. Not that I have many, but one of them writes square, a most extraordinary hand, and quite illegible. Most people seem to be proud of not being able to write, except schoolboys and girls. There is no accounting for the surprising things that are scratched on paper with a pen and called writing. But in a world of things of that sort what is one to expect? It is just like all the rest, and I have given up thinking about it altogether. I hope you have, Captain Bowels?”
“Not quite, but very nearly,” replied the gallant captain.
“Dinner at last,” said Colonel Crusty, as the gong sounded its hideous though welcome alarm. “Captain Bowels, will you take my daughter? Miss Stuart, allow me. Sorry we’ve got no one for you, Mr Stuart.”
Kenneth fancied there was a touch of irony in the last observation, but he did not feel jealous, for two reasons—first, he knew, (from Miss Peppy), that the captain was no favourite with Colonel Crusty, and was only tolerated because of having been introduced by an intimate friend and old school companion of the former; and, second, being already in love with another, he did not wish to have the honour of handing Bella down to dinner at all.