"
"Vernon!" my wife exclaimed, with a very decided air, "you men are
such simpletons! You credit everybody always with the best and
purest motives. But you're utterly wrong. I can see through that
woman. The hateful, hateful wretch! She did it to spite me! Oh,
my poor, poor boy; my dear, guileless Bernard!"
Bernard, I may mention, is our oldest son, aged just twenty-four,
and a Cambridge graduate. He's a tutor at King's, and though he's
a dear good fellow, and a splendid long-stop, I couldn't myself
conscientiously say I regard guilelessness as quite his most marked
characteristic.
"What are you doing?" I asked, as Lucy sat down with a resolutely
determined air at her writing-table in the corner.
"Doing!" my wife replied, with some asperity her tone. "Why,
answering that hateful, detestable woman!"
I glanced over her shoulder, and followed her pen as she wrote:
"MY DEAR MRS. WADE: It was INDEED a delight to us to see your neat
little handwriting again. NOTHING would give us greater pleasure,
I'm sure, than to take charge of your friend, who, I'm confident,
we shall find a most charming companion. Bernard will be with us,
so she won't feel it dull, I trust.
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