Godfried Darg.”
They laughed very heartily at this strange epistle, and one of the boys rushed up stairs for the shaving-box. It was indeed a beautiful affair, and all the articles were of the very finest quality; but what created great surprise was the contents of a note found on the top of a little steel-box which fitted nicely in one of the divisions. The note ran thus:
“Within the little steel-box is the miniature of the lady you are destined to marry, this box you are not to open till you see my two dogs, Howler and Barker, and then by consulting them you will find out the way to open the box, for it has a curious fastening, and cannot be opened but by their connivance unless it is broken, and if broken, the miniature will be destroyed. I think you can depend on yourself in this particular, but be sure to spit in Barnes’ face, and if you could add a tweak of the nose and a kick, you would greatly oblige me.
G. D.”
Of course it was agreed on all sides that the little box should remain quietly untouched just where it now lay, but they made themselves very merry over the letter and note. As to applying again for the school not one of the family would listen to it, not even if Mr. Barnes came in person to make the offer.
“No!” said Davie, the youngest boy; “not if he were to fall down on his knees and beg you to go.”
This created a laugh again, and this good-heartedness was very soothing to poor Arthur.
Not one of the children would take the letter to Herman Hall, and the hostler was too shabby a looking fellow to be sent on such an errand to so grand a place, so Martha’s lover, Garry Lovel, a young man who worked Mr. Green’s farm on shares, undertook to deliver it himself. There need not have been such confabulations on the subject, for Garry did not get farther than the porter’s lodge, an awful gloomy looking place, Garry said, and the porter was as awful-looking and gloomy as the lodge. He was told that an answer would be sent in the course of the day, and he therefore need not wait, and the young man said he put wings to his feet and a quarter of a mile between him and the porter before he got to an ordinary walk.
“If I were you, Mister Arthur,” said Garry, “I never would set foot in yon hall, for there is something wrong there. I can’t believe that honest people would shut themselves up in that dull, musty sort of way, unless they had something to conceal. You had far better turn farmer, here is a fine chance, for neighbor Fielding wants to go West, and he would rent his farm for a trifle.”
“Do take it,” said Mrs. Green.