“‘We’ve been all’—I can’t make this word out, can you, dear?”
“No, love.”
“‘We’ve been all-worked!’ No, it can’t be that. Stay, ‘We’ve been all wrecked!’”
Here Martha laid down the letter with a look of horror, and Jane, with a face of ashy paleness, exclaimed, “Then they’re lost!”
“But no,” cried Martha, “George could not have written to us from Tablecloth Bay had he been lost.”
“Neither he could!” exclaimed Jane, eagerly.
Under the influence of the revulsion of feeling this caused, Martha burst into tears and Jane into laughter. Immediately after, Jane wept and Martha laughed; then they both laughed and cried together, after which they felt for their pocket-handkerchiefs, and discovered that in their haste they had forgotten them; so they had to call the servant-girl and send her up-stairs for them; and when the handkerchiefs were brought, they had to be unfolded before the sisters could dry their eyes.
When they had done so, and were somewhat composed, they went on with the reading of the letter.
“‘We’ve been all wrecked’—Dreadful—‘and the poor Red Angel’”—“Oh! it can’t be that, Martha dear!”
“Indeed, it looks very like it, Jane darling. Oh! I see; it’s Eric—‘and the poor Red Eric has been patched,’ or—‘pitched on a rock and smashed to sticks and stivers’—Dear me! what can that be? I know what ‘sticks’ are, but I can’t imagine what ‘stivers’ mean. Can you, Jane?”