She has evidently engaged some
friend to write that address, and it's a neat one."
"Father, you said there was earth about it; how can that be?" broke in
Hope, scarcely mollified, as yet.
He held it up, and pointed to its worn condition, and two or three
black thumb-marks.
"Isn't there earth for you?" he laughed. "What is earth but soil?"
"Oh--h!" cried Hope, "is that fair--to play upon words so?"
"Let's call it square anyhow, sweetheart, and you read it aloud to
sister and me, won't you?"
Hope could do no less than comply, and the bulky missive was received
by the listeners with as much respectful enjoyment as if it had been a
neat-appearing, well-worded epistle, instead of the rambling,
disjointed, much-soiled, and oddly-expressed letter that it was. The
good woman began and ended every paragraph with lamentations and
longings over her darlings, and the lines between told of her 'good'
and 'bad' lodgers, as she distinctly divided them, her few pleasure
jaunts, and some of the gossip of the neighborhood, only a few words of
which concern this little history.
"You'll recklict," she wrote, "the leddy what come jest a dey or too
before yoo saled? Well, shees heer yit and I like 'er best ov al. She
ain't to say real lively, yoo no, but shese good compny, and ken talk
good on most enny sub-jick, and she ain't abuv spending a 'our with old
Debby now'n then either. She is thee wun what is riting yure names on
this verry letter--ain't it good ov 'er?"
"Who is this lodger?" asked the captain.
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