Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary receiving houses which are established in different parts of the city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for the receipt of letters, one of which — a most hateful thing to her — stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump as she called it out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post. Her epistle to her sister-inlaw, of whom she never spoke otherwise than as Mrs Stanbury, was as follows:
The Close, Exeter, 22nd April, 186
My dear Sister Stanbury,
Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not approve, and therefore I have put an end to my connection with him. I shall be happy to entertain your daughter Dorothy in my house if you and she approve of such a plan. Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to receive you or her sister, not her brother, in my house any Wednesday morning between half-past nine and half-past twelve. I will endeavour to make my house pleasant to her and useful, and will make her an allowance of 25 pounds per annum for her clothes as long as she may remain with me. I shall expect her to be regular at meals, to be constant in going to church, and not to read modern novels.
I intend the arrangement to be permanent, but of course I must retain the power of closing it if, and when, I shall see fit. Its permanence must be contingent on my life. I have no power of providing for any one after my death,
Yours truly,
JEMIMA STANBURY.
I hope the young lady does not have any false hair about her.’
When this note was received at Nuncombe Putney the amazement which it occasioned was extreme. Mrs Stanbury, the widow of the late vicar, lived in a little morsel of a cottage on the outskirts of the village, with her two daughters, Priscilla and Dorothy. Their whole income, out of which it was necessary that they should pay rent for their cottage, was less than 70 pounds per annum. During the last few months a five-pound note now and again had found its way to Nuncombe Putney out of the coffers of the ‘D. R.’; but the ladies there were most unwilling to be so relieved, thinking that their brother’s career was of infinitely more importance than their comforts or even than their living. They were very poor, but they were accustomed to poverty. The elder sister was older than Hugh, but Dorothy, the younger, to whom this strange invitation was now made, was two years younger than her brother, and was now nearly twenty-six. How they had lived, and dressed themselves, and had continued to be called ladies by the inhabitants of the village was, and is, and will be a mystery to those who have had the spending of much larger incomes, but have still been always poor. But they had lived, had gone to church every Sunday in decent apparel, and had kept up friendly relations with the family of the present vicar, and with one or two other neighbours.
When the letter had been read first by the mother, and then aloud, and then by each of them separately, in the little sitting-room in the cottage, there was silence among them for neither of them desired to be the first to express an opinion. Nothing could be more natural than the proposed arrangement, had it not been made unnatural by a quarrel existing nearly throughout the whole life of the person most nearly concerned. Priscilla, the elder daughter, was the one of the family who was generally the ruler, and she at last expressed an opinion adverse to the arrangement. ‘My dear, you would never be able to bear it,’ said Priscilla.
‘I suppose not,’ said Mrs Stanbury, plaintively.
‘I could try,’ said Dorothy.
‘My dear, you don’t know that woman,’ said Priscilla.
‘Of course I don’t know her,’ said Dorothy.
‘She has always been very good to Hugh,’ said Mrs Stanbury.
‘I don’t think she has been good to him at all,’ said Priscilla.
‘But think what a saving it would be,’ said Dorothy. ‘And I could send home half of what Aunt Stanbury says she would give me.’
‘You must not think of that,’ said Priscilla, ‘because she expects you to be dressed.’
‘I should like to try,’ she said, before the morning was over ‘if you and mamma don’t think it would be wrong.’
The conference that day ended in a written request to Aunt Stanbury that a week might be allowed for consideration, the letter being written by Priscilla, but signed with her mother’s name, and with a very long epistle to Hugh, in which each of the ladies took a part, and in which advice and decision were demanded. It was very evident to Hugh that his mother and Dorothy were for compliance, and that Priscilla was for refusal. But he never doubted for a moment. ‘Of course she will go,’ he said in his answer to Priscilla; ‘and she must understand that Aunt Stanbury is a most excellent woman, as true as the sun, thoroughly honest, with no fault but this, that she likes her own way. Of course Dolly can go back again if she finds the house too hard for her.’ Then he sent another five-pound note, observing that Dolly’s journey to Exeter would cost money, and that her wardrobe would want some improvement.
‘I’m very glad that it isn’t me,’ said Priscilla, who, however, did not attempt to oppose the decision of the man of the family. Dorothy was greatly gratified by the excitement of the proposed change in her life, and the following letter, the product of the wisdom of the family, was written by Mrs Stanbury.
‘Nuncombe Putney, 1st May, 186
My dear Sister Stanbury,
We are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer, which my daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of affectionate gratitude. I think you will find her docile, good-tempered, and amiable; but a mother, of course, speaks well of her own child. She will endeavour to comply with your wishes in all things reasonable. She; of course, understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will come back home on the expression of your wish that it should be so. And she will, of course, do the same, if she should find that living in Exeter does not suit herself.’ (This sentence was inserted at the instance of Priscilla, after much urgent expostulation.) ‘Dorothy will be ready to go to you on any day you may fix after the 7th of this month.
Believe me to remain,
Your affectionate sister-inlaw,
P. STANBURY.’
‘She’s going to come,’ said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the letter in her hand.
‘I never doubted her coming, ma’am,’ said Martha.
‘And I mean her to stay, unless it’s her own fault. She’ll have the small room upstairs, looking out front, next to mine. And you must go and fetch her.’
‘Go and fetch her, ma’am?’
‘Yes. If you won’t, I must.’
‘She ain’t a child, ma’am. She’s twenty-five years old, and surely she can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from Lessboro’.’
‘There’s no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those railway carriages, and I won’t have her come by herself. If she is to live with me, she shall begin decently at any rate.’
Martha argued the matter, but was of course beaten, and on the day fixed started early in the morning for Nuncombe Putney, and returned in the afternoon to the Close with her charge. By the time that she had reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to the dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving that in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and partly, perhaps, by finding that the young woman’s manner to herself was both gentle and sprightly. She knew well that gentleness alone, without some back-bone of strength under it, would not long succeed with Miss Stanbury. ‘As far as I can judge, ma’am, she’s a sweet young lady,’ said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her mistress, who had retired upstairs to her own room, in order that she might thus hear a word of tidings from her lieutenant, before she showed herself on the field of action.
‘Sweet! I hate your sweets,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘Then why did you send for her, ma’am?’
‘Because I was an old fool. But I must go down and receive her, I suppose.’
Then Miss Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went The matter to he............