She was again on her way to get her hat. My only chance of stopping her was to invent a compromise.
"Write him a note," I said—and then suddenly remembered that she was blind. "You shall dictate," I added; "and I will hold the pen. Be content with that for to-day. For my sake, Lucilla!"
She yielded—not very willingly, poor thing. But she jealously declined to let me hold the pen.
"My first note to him must be all written by me," she said. "I can write—in my own roundabout way. It's long and tiresome; but still I can do it. Come and see."
She led the way to a writing-table in a corner of the room, and sat for awhile with the pen in her hand, thinking. Her irresistible smile broke suddenly like a glow of light over her "Ah!" she exclaimed, "I know how to tell him what I think."
Guiding the pen in her right hand with the fingers of her left she wrote slowly, in large childish characters, these words:—"DEAR MR. OSCAR,—I have heard all about you. Please send the little gold vase.—Your friend, LUCILLA."
She enclosed and directed the letter, and clapped her hands for joy. "He will know what that means!" she said gaily.
It was useless to attempt making a second remonstrance. I rang the bell, under protest (imagine her receiving a present from a gentleman to whom she had spoken for the first time that morning!)—and the groom was sent off to Browndown with the letter. In making this concession, I privately said to myself, "I shall keep a tight hand over Oscar; he is the manageable person of the two!"
The interval before the return of the groom was not an easy interval to fill up. I proposed some music. Lucilla was still too full of her new interest to be able to give her attention to anything else. She suddenly remembered that her father and her step-mother ought both to be informed that Mr. Dubourg was a perfectly presentable person at the rectory: she decided on writing to her father.
On this occasion, she made no difficulty about permitting me to hold the pen, while she told me what to write. We produced between us rather a flighty, enthusiastic, high-flown sort of letter. I felt by no means sure that we should raise a favorable impression of our new neighbor in the mind of Reverend Finch. That was, however, not my affair. I appeared to excellent advantage in the matter, as the judicious foreign lady who had insisted on making inquiries. For the rest, it was a point of honor with me—writing for a person who was blind—not to change a single word in the sentences which Lucilla dictated to me. The letter completed, I wrote the address of the house in Brighton at which Mr. Finch then happened to be staying; and I was next about to close the envelope in due course—when Lucilla stopped me.