At the door they parted.
'I shall give myself the pleasure of calling for you again to-morrow,' said he. 'Your new equipment I must tell Mrs. Jones is eminently becoming.'
She went to her room, and when she had removed her bonnet and mantle, she seated herself at the window, and unknotted the string that bound the parcel. A hundred, even fifty, years ago, no woman ever dreamed of cutting a string; she laboriously unknotted it, then did it up in a tag and laid it aside for further use.
A small square cardboard case was disclosed that contained cotton wool, bedded in which were a pair of imitation pearl drop earrings. Folded about the case was a letter. This she proceeded eagerly to read,—it was from Mrs. Jose:
'My dear Winefred,—Your good mother and I hope you are well, as it leaves me. I send you two pretty eardrops that I had when I was married. I have grown old and fat and ugly, and shall never wear them no more. They suit young and pretty faces, so take them, and when you wear them think of your mother's and my hearts that hang on you. I send them to you by Jack Rattenbury, who has found a place at last, and decent wages, so he tells me, enough to keep him in bread and cheese. He is a good lad and upright, and I am pleased to know it. Your mother is tolerably well. My brindled half-Jersey has dropped her calf, and we have had trouble that way before. I am going to look out for a goat to run with the cows.
That is a good thing where they take to dropping their calves. Good-bye, I'm terrible short of breath with writing so much.—Your affectionate friend and well-wisher,
Eliza Jose.
'M.P.—Your mother is a curious customer. She was all agog for you to go to Bath, and now she is in a sort of raging fever and ague to boot because you are away. 'Tis exactly like a cow when they've took away her calf.'
Winefred sat in the window turning over the earrings, but thinking rather of the 'M.P.' than of anything else, when there came a rap at her door, and, without awaiting a response, Jesse entered.
'What have you there?' she asked at once, her feminine eye lighting on the bit of cheap jewellery.
'It is a present from dear Mrs. Jose.'