Ada was just crossing the hall to the drawing-room, a telegram on a salver in her red hand.
"Here you are, Ada," said Edwin, stopping her, with a gesture towards the telegram.
Edwin and Hilda followed the starched and fussy girl into the drawing-room, in which were about a dozen people, including Fearns, the lawyer, and his wife, the recently married Stephen and Vera Cheswardine, several Swetnams, and Janet Orgreave, who sat at the closed piano, smiling vaguely.
Tom Swetnam, standing up, took the telegram.
"I never knew they delivered telegrams at this time o’ night," said Fearns sharply, looking at his watch. He was wont to keep a careful eye on the organisation of railways, ships, posts, and other contrivances for the shifting of matter from one spot to another. An exacting critic of detail, he was proud of them in the mass, and called them civilisation.
"They don’t," said Tom Swetnam naughtily, glad to plague a man older than himself, and the father of a family. Tom was a mere son, but he had travelled, and was, indeed, just returned from an excursion through Scandinavia. "Observe there’s no deception. The envelope’s been opened. Moreover, it’s addressed to Ben Clewlow, not to me. Ben’s sent it up. I asked him to. Now, we’ll see."
Having displayed the envelope like a conjurer, he drew forth the telegram, and prepared to read it aloud. One half of the company was puzzled; the other half showed an instructed excitement. Tom read the message:
"’Twenty-seven pounds ten nine. Philosophers tell us that there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless it may well be doubted whether the discovery of gold at Barmouth, together with two earthquake shocks following each other in quick succession in the same district, does not constitute, in the history of the gallant little Principality, a double event of unique--’" He stopped.
Vera Cheswardine, pretty, fluffy, elegant, cried out with all the impulsiveness of her nature:
"Whatever is it all about?" mildly asked Mrs. Fearns, a quiet and dignified, youngish woman whom motherhood had made somewhat absent-minded when she was away from her children.
"Missing-word competition," Fearns explained to her with curt, genial superiority. He laughed outright. "You do go it, some of you chaps," he said. "Why, that telegram cost over a couple of bob, I bet!"