Lucy looked across the table at me with a face of blank horror. "O Vernon," she
cried, "what are we EVER to do? And an American at that! This is just TOO
ghastly!" It's a habit of Lucy's, I may remark, to talk italics.
I laid down my coffee-cup, and glanced back at her in surprise. "Why, what's
up?" I exclaimed, scanning the envelope close. "A letter from Oxford, surely. Mrs.
Wade, of Christchurch--I thought I knew the hand. And SHE's not an American."
"Well, look for yourself!" Lucy cried, and tossed the note to me, pouting. I took it,
and read. I'm aware that I have the misfortune to be only a man, but it really
didn't strike me as quite so terrible.
"DEAR MRS. HANCOCK: George has just heard that your husband and you are
going for a trip to New York this summer. COULD you manage to do us a VERY
GREAT kindness? I hope you won't mind it. We have an American friend--a Miss
Easterbrook, of Kansas City, niece of Professor Asa P. Easterbrook, the well-
known Yale geologist--who very much wishes to find an escort across the
Atlantic. If you would be so good as to take charge of her, and deliver her safely
to Dr. Horace Easterbrook, of Hoboken, on your arrival in the States, you would
do a good turn to her, and at the same time confer an eternal favour on "Yours
very truly, "EMILY WADE."
Lucy folded her hands in melodramatic despair.
"Kansas City!" she exclaimed, with a shudder of horror. "And Asa P. Easterbrook!
A geologist, indeed! That horrid Mrs. Wade! She just did it on purpose!"
"It seems to me," I put in, regarding the letter close, "she did it merely because
she was asked to find a chaperon for the girl; and she wrote the very shortest
possible note, in a perfunctory way, to the very first acquaintance she chanced to
hear of who was going to America."
"Vernon!" my wife exclaimed, with a very decided air, "you men are such
simpletons! You credit everybody always with the best and purest motives. But
you're utterly wrong. I can see through that woman. The hateful, hateful wretch!
She did it to spite me! Oh, my poor, poor boy; my dear, guileless Bernard!"
Bernard, I may mention, is our oldest son, aged just twenty-four, and a
Cambridge graduate. He's a tutor at King's, and though he's a dear good fellow,
and a splendid long-stop, I couldn't myself conscientiously say I regard
guilelessness as quite his most marked characteristic.
"What are you doing?" I asked, as Lucy sat down with a resolutely determined air
at her writing-table in the corner.
"Doing!" my wife replied, with some asperity her tone. "Why, answering that
hateful, detestable woman!"
I glanced over her shoulder, and followed her pen as she wrote:
"MY DEAR MRS. WADE: It was INDEED a delight to us to see your neat little
handwriting again. NOTHING would give us greater pleasure, I'm sure, than to
take charge of your friend, who, I'm confident, we shall find a most charming
