Lucy looked across the table at me with a face of blank horror.
"O Vernon," she cried, "what are we EVER to do? And an American
at that! This is just TOO ghastly!" It's a habit of Lucy's, I may
remark, to talk italics.
I laid down my coffee-cup, and glanced back at her in surprise.
"Why, what's up?" I exclaimed, scanning the envelope close. "A
letter from Oxford, surely. Mrs. Wade, of Christchurch--I thought
I knew the hand. And SHE's not an American."
"Well, look for yourself!" Lucy cried, and tossed the note to me,
pouting. I took it, and read. I'm aware that I have the misfortune to
be only a man, but it really didn't strike me as quite so terrible.
"DEAR MRS. HANCOCK: George has just heard that your husband and
you are going for a trip to New York this summer. COULD you manage
to do us a VERY GREAT kindness? I hope you won't mind it. We have
an American friend--a Miss Easterbrook, of Kansas City, niece of
Professor Asa P. Easterbrook, the well-known Yale geologist--who
very much wishes to find an escort across the Atlantic. If you
would be so good as to take charge of her, and deliver her safely
to Dr. Horace Easterbrook, of Hoboken, on your arrival in the States,
you would do a good turn to her, and at the same time confer an
eternal favour on "Yours very truly, "EMILY WADE."
Lucy folded her hands in melodramatic despair.
"Kansas City!" she exclaimed, with a shudder of horror. "And Asa
P. Easterbrook! A geologist, indeed! That horrid Mrs. Wade! She
just did it on purpose!"
"It seems to me," I put in, regarding the letter close, "she did
it merely because she was asked to find a chaperon for the girl;
and she wrote the very shortest possible note, in a perfunctory
way, to the very first acquaintance she chanced to hear of who was
going to America."
"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!"