“And I’d like to sort Toft for it! Ifs he who should have gone! He’s upstairs now, keeping out of my way, and that grim and gray you’d think he’d seen a ghost! And ’Truria, silly girl, she’s all of a quiver this morning. It’s ‘Mother, let me do this!’ and ‘Mother, I’ll do that!’ all because her reverend—not, as I tell her, that aught will ever come of it—has got a roof over his head at last.”
“But that’s good news! Has Mr. Colet got some work?”
“Not he, the silly man! Nor likely! There’s mighty little work for them as go against the gentry. For what he’s got he’s to thank Mr. Basset.”
“Mr. Basset.”
“To be sure,” Mrs. Toft answered, with a covert glance at the girl, “why not, Miss? Some talk and the wind goes by. There’s plenty of those. And some say naught but do—and that’s Mr. Basset. He’s took in Mr. Colet till he can find a church. Etruria’s that up about it, I tell her, smile before breakfast and sweat before night. And so she’ll find it, I warrant!”
“It is very good of Mr. Basset,” Mary said gravely. And then, “Is that some one knocking, Mrs. Toft?”
“It’s well to have young ears!” Mrs. Toft took out the tray, and returned with a letter. “It’s for you, Miss,” she said. “The postman’s late this morning, but cheap’s a slow traveller. When a letter was a letter and cost ninepence it came to hand like a gentleman!”
Mary waited to hear no more. She knew the handwriting, and as quickly as she could she escaped from the room. No one with any claim to taste used an envelope in those days, and to open a letter so that no rent might mar its fairness called for a care which she could not exercise in public.
Alone, in her room, she opened it, and her eyes grew serious as they travelled down the page, which bore signs of haste.
“Sweetheart,” it began, and she thought that charming, “I do not ask if you reached the Gatehouse safely, for I listened and I must have heard, if harm befel you. I drove home as happy as a king, and grieved only that I had not had that of you which I had a right to have—damn that carter! This troubles me the more as I shall not see you again for a time, and if this does not disappoint you too, you’re a deceiver! My plans are altered by to-day’s news that Peel returns to office. In any event, I had to go to Seabourne’s for Christmas, now I must be there for a meeting to-morrow and go from there to London on the same business. You would not have me desert my post, I am sure? Heaven knows how long I may be kept, possibly a fortnight, possibly more. But the moment I can I shall be with you.