“If Caroline neglected her duty,” she retorted, “that is no reason why I should do the same. I want to see them.”
“You had better take these instead,” I returned, pushing towards her a tray of wedding cards.
“You insist?” I replied, in the tone of one speaking to a naughty child. “How old are you, Miss Dixon?”
“I think I am a good deal older than you, Rollo, in this respect; I don’t keep letters as I did when I was a sentimental schoolgirl. I destroy _that_ kind.” And she nodded towards the bundle.
“Indeed?” I said. “And why did you not tell me sooner? That would have been valuable information to me at one time.”
“I might have written a good deal more than I did.”
“You never wrote anything unfitted for my sheltered youth,” she replied, quietly smiling, and burrowing one foot deeper into the cavernous recesses of a slipper.
“I don’t post all I write,” I corrected, “but I have written things that would have amazed a Bassishaw--and thought twice about it.”
“Bassishaw doesn’t say much in his letters,” she said musingly. She and Caroline were very good friends, and there had doubtless been a good deal of inter-feminine confidence between them.
“Oh,” I replied offhand, “they are experiments. It is another way of keeping a diary. Perhaps, after all, you may see them if you care to. They are merely studies in moods.”
“Here you are,” I continued. “Arthur Bassishaw, Esq., on the occasion of his engagement to Caroline. Good advice--but a little too late. It wouldn’t have been taken, anyway, from what I know of His Omnipotent Youthfulness. Never posted.”
“It might have been worth while to post it for the sake of reply,” Millicent returned smiling; “you’d have had something badly written, but very ardent.”
“Bassishaw’s sword would be a good deal mightier than his pen,” I replied. “To see him in the throes of composition is a felicity I have hitherto missed. Now here’s another: to Caroline, on the same occasion. That, Millicent, cost me some trouble to write, and I am afraid it showed it--I have only one sister, you know. Unposted.”
“That was rather nice of you, Rollo,” she said.
“I should only have given myself away,” I returned. “Now this, to Mrs. Bassishaw, is one of two--the other one was posted. It was a hard alternative. I sent the usual nice thing; Mrs. Bassishaw would understand that. This”--I tapped the envelope--“would have appeared difficult to a widow still young, and still in the running with her own son.”