"It is a most _won_derful thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr. Oldways."
She spoke those four words as if from them Mrs. Megilp could understand everything.
"Gone! No, indeed!" said Mrs. Ledwith. "He wrote the letter. He wants me to _come_; me, and all of us,--to Boston, to live; and to get acquainted with him."
"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, with the promptness and benignity of a Christian apostle, "it's your duty to go."
"And he offers me a house, and two thousand dollars a year."
"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, "it is _emphatically_ your duty to go."
All at once something strange came over Laura Ledwith. She crumpled the letter tight in her hands with a clutch of quick excitement, and began to choke with a little sob, and to laugh at the same time.
"Don't give way!" cried Mrs. Megilp, coming to her and giving her a little shake and a slap. "If you do once you will again, and you're _not_ hystericky!"
"He's sent for Frank, too. Frank and I will be together again in dear old Boston! But--we can't be children and sit on the shed any more; and--it _isn't_ dear old Boston, either!"
And then Laura gave right up, and had a good cry for five minutes. After that she felt better, and asked Mrs. Megilp how she thought a house in Spiller Street would do.
But she couldn't rip any more of those breadths that morning.
Agatha and Florence came in from some calls at the Goldthwaites and the Haddens, and the news was told, and they had their bonnets to take off, and the dinner-bell rang, and the smell of the spicy pigeon-stew came up the stairs, all together. And they went down, talking fast; and one said "house," and another "carpets," and another "music and German;" and Desire, trailing a breadth of green silk in her hand that she had never let go since the letter was read, cried out, "oratorios!" And nobody quite knew what they were going down stairs for, or had presence of mind to realize the pigeons, or help each other or themselves properly, when they got there! Except Mrs. Megilp, who was polite and hospitable to them all, and picked two birds in the most composed and elegant manner.
When the dessert was put upon the table, and Christina, confusedly enlightened as to the family excitement, and excessively curious, had gone away into the kitchen, Mrs. Ledwith said to Mrs. Megilp,--