“It is all written in Latin, and I can’t make out a word of it,” he said, handing it to the Captain.
“Don’t you see that little scarlet emblem up in the corner?” the Captain asked, as soon as he glanced at it. “That is the emblem of a cardinal, as I thought everybody knew. Yes, certainly. It is signed ‘Galotti.’ You youngsters have been hobnobbing with Cardinal Galotti. Get off to bed, Henry; I can’t have my cabin boy fooling around with Princes of the Church.”
CHAPTER XV.
NEWS FROM NEW ZEALAND.
THE little cottage in Huntington took on a new coat of white while Kit was seeing the world and earning money beyond the sea. All the weak spots were mended, the yard was put in order, the trees trimmed, and in the rear a neat garden was made, where, toward the end of the afternoons, Mrs. Silburn and Vieve went out in sunbonnets and pulled weeds and did such other work as women’s hands were able to perform. It was a very different looking place from the dingy spot it had become a year before under the shock of its owner’s disappearance. And better than all, the last cent of indebtedness upon it had been paid off.
“I am glad you are able to do this, Mrs. Silburn; glad on your own account,” the lawyer said when she made the last payment. “I hardly expected it, with the trouble you have had. I was prepared to give you as much time as you wanted in paying this up.”
“Oh, you have been very good, Mr. Clarkson,” Mrs. Silburn answered. “For a time I thought I should have to ask you for an extension. But I did not know then what a good boy I had. Yes, I knew it of course; but I did not know that he would be able to do so much for me so soon.”
“Yes, you have a good boy, and no mistake,” the lawyer assented. “But you can hardly call him a boy any more. When do you expect him home again?”
“In three or four weeks, now, I hope. And you know we have a little hope of seeing some one else, too. It is a faint chance; but if the man I told you of in the New Zealand hospital should prove to be my husband, we want to have everything in order for him when he returns. That is the reason Kit was so anxious to have the house painted; and that is why I have struggled to have all the debts paid. We are looking every day for a letter from the consul in New Zealand.”
It was putting it very mildly to say that they were “looking” for a letter from the consul. They were so eager for it that they did not let a single mail arrive without going to the little post-office on the hill. Not only that, but they had matters arranged so that as Vieve came down the hill from the office, she could let her mother know in advance of her arrival whether she had got any letters. Their front windows looked across to the diagonal road that went up past the post-office; and Vieve was to wave the letter, if she got one, as she came down the hill, so that her mother, sitting sewing by the window, would see it.