These Gillespies had clearly been gloomy people, narrow of creed, strict in life, staunch alike in love and in hatred. The Brands were frivolous, practically creedless, moving at the breath of every social wind, their emotions floating like bubbles on the surface.
Yet both the Brands and the Gillespies kept silence over “the dead.” They shut up their names and their memories in the tomb. It had often pained Lucy to realise that in her sister’s silence her own recollections of her early home were fading. When we so inevitably soon pass out of hearing of those who have shared a common past, Lucy felt much should be made of that treasury, while two remain to turn it over. Apart from the attractions of Mrs. Bray’s quaintness and elfishness, the old lady had for Lucy the supreme attraction that she remembered Lucy’s parents, and seldom saw her without making bright reference to some saying or doing of “your father” or “your mother.” But when Florence was forced to mention these parents, it was always in a whisper—such as Lucy would have used in naming a painful subject. And she invariably said “poor papa,” “poor mamma,” as if Death—as universal as birth—can, in itself, be a misfortune.
Winter was drawing on, as Clementina poetically expressed it, “fast as a stone rolls down the hillside.” No Pacific Island letter had ever come from Mr. Challoner, but Lucy said to herself that possibly his American letter would but come the sooner. Every morning she woke with the thought “Charlie’s letter may come to-day!” She knew the hope was still premature. So when she did not find Charlie’s letter, she always opened her other letters cheerily and read aloud any items of news which she thought might amuse the little breakfast party, Hugh generally having an interest in most of his mother’s friends, since those who cared for her did not forget to send a message to him, and one or two even added a bit of paper “all for himself,” covered with “O’s” for kisses.
One morning towards the end of November three letters lay by Lucy’s breakfast plate. The top one was a note from the picture dealer, the under one was but a type-written circular. But Lucy paused over the centre missive.
“Here is a funny-looking epistle,” she said, holding it up. The envelope was thin and poor and dirty, and the writing seemed to have been done by a pin-like pen wielded by a very heavy hand, which must have wrought sore damage on its instrument before it laid it down.
“I know what that is,” said Tom confidently; “it’s the bricklayer’s bill.” A few days earlier a bricklayer had been employed to relay a stone in the scullery floor, and Tom and Hugh had superintended the performance with great delight.
“Well, I don’t think he makes out many bills,” remarked Lucy, rather daintily tearing open the filthy wrapper and unfolding its contents.
As she did so, her contented smile changed to a look of bewilderment.
(To be continued.)