My bathe made me tired. I sha'n't go out again to-day.
Susan is wooden-headed past belief. I was amused for a few moments at the odd comments she made on Ruddington's letter; but her dulness grows monotonous. She began:
"Don't you think, Miss, that ... that he writes rather strange?"
"I mean, Miss," whispered Susan mysteriously, "do you think he's ... quite right in his head?"
"Well, Susan," I answered, "when one looks at the way he runs after a girl whom he's never spoken to, I admit it does make one wonder if he isn't a bit mad."
"I mean his letter, Miss," she said. "And this big blue paper."
"As for his letters, Susan," I replied, "I don't see much wrong with them. Aren't they bright, and frank, and kind?"
"Why does he say, Miss, that he's named Henry?"
"But lords don't have any names, Miss, do they? I mean they only have surnames."
"It was Mrs. Hobbs, the cook, that told me, Miss," Susan explained. "Mrs. Hobbs said that a lord could only have a surname--as it might be Ruddington--and the King could only have a Christian name--as it might be Edward. That's the difference, Miss, between a king and a lord--one can only have a Christian name, and the other can only have a surname. So how can he be named Henry?"
"Susan, you remember Mrs. Hobbs's dreadful mousseline sauce? Till to-day, I would never have believed that there was any subject in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, about which Mrs. Hobbs knew less than she did about cooking. I was wrong."
"If he's proper Lord Ruddington, Miss, I don't see how he can be named Henry," persisted Susan doggedly. "I wonder, Miss, ought we to write to Mrs. Juggins?"
"Yes, Miss. He says she's the housekeeper at the Towers."
Positively the stupid creature believed that Lord Ruddington had seriously referred her to an actually existing dame of the name of Juggins. Really, I haven't the patience to set down half the ridiculous things she said. She is certain that her letters don't weigh "all those ounces." She is aghast at the bad temper and obstinacy, which must truly be traits in Ruddington's character, "because he admits it, Miss, himself." She is surprised that he should be brooding so bitterly over his wasted tuppence; "though they do say, Miss, that the richer people are, the meaner they are in little things, and that's why they've got rich." She is not romantically _exaltée_ at the news that he has never loved another. But she is grateful that he has got safely over the measles; because "Uncle Bob had them after he was grown up, and I did think, Miss, it looked so silly." And so on, and so on, and so on.