"A letter for you, papa," said Mrs. Anerley, entering the room.
"I don't want it," he said, petulantly and angrily turning away—quarrelling with the mist of bitter tears that rose around his eyes.
She glanced from him to Dove (her kindly eyes brightened as they met the quiet look of the girl), laid the letter down, and left the room again. Mechanically he took up the letter, opened it, and read it. Before he had finished, however, he seemed to recall himself; and then he read it again from the beginning—carefully, anxiously, with strange surprise on his face. He looked at the envelope, again at the letter, and finally at the bank-note which he held in his hand.
"Dove, Dove!" he said, "look at this! Here is the money that is to take us all down to St. Mary-Kirby again—back to the old house, you know, and your own room upstairs; and in a little while the springtime will be in, and you and I shall go down to the river for primroses, as we used to do. Here it is, Dove—everything we want; and we can go, whenever you brighten up and get strong enough to move."
"But where did you get the money, papa?"
"God must have looked at your face, my darling, and seen that you wanted to go to St. Mary-Kirby."
"And you have plenty of money, papa, to spend on anything?"
All his ordinary prudence forsook him. Even without that guarantee of the bank-note, he would at once have believed in the genuineness of the letter, so eager was he to believe it for Dove's dear sake.
"Plenty of money, Dove? Yes. But not to spend on anything. Only to spend on you."
"There was Will's knock," she said; "he has just come in time to hear the news. But go and tell him in another room, papa, for I am tired."