"From Laurie," she said. Maggie ceased eating toast for a second, to listen.
Then the old lady uttered a small cry of dismay.
"He thinks he can't come, after all," she said.
Maggie had a moment of very acute annoyance.
"What does he say? Why not?" she asked.
There was a pause. She watched Mrs. Baxter's lips moving slowly, her glasses in place; saw the page turned, and turned again. She took another piece of toast. There are few things more irritating than to have fragments of a letter doled out piecemeal.
"He doesn't say. He just says he's very busy indeed, and has a great deal of way to make up." The old lady continued reading tranquilly, and laid the letter down.
"Nothing more?" asked Maggie, consumed with annoyance.
"He's been to the theatre once or twice.... Dear Laurie! I'm glad he's recovering his spirits."
Maggie was very angry indeed. She thought it abominable of the boy to treat his mother like that. And then there was the shooting—not much, indeed, beyond the rabbits, which the man who acted as occasional keeper told her wanted thinning, and a dozen or two of wild pheasants—yet this shooting had always been done, she understood, at Christmas, ever since Master Laurie had been old enough to hold a gun.