But perhaps our good
nephew has amassed some cash, though there seems to be but little on the
Continent, after all this devastation. Is there anything, Maria, in his
letter to enable us to hope that he is coming home with money?"

"Not a word, I am afraid," Mrs. Twemlow answered, sadly. "But take it,
my dear, and read it to me slowly. You make things so plain, because
of practice every Sunday. Oh, Joshua, I never can be sure which you
are greatest in--the Lessons or the Sermon. But before you begin I will
shoot the bolt a little, as if it had caught by accident. Eliza does
rush in upon us sometimes in the most unbecoming, unladylike way. And I
never can get you to reprove her."

"It would be as much as my place is worth, as the maids say when
imagined to have stolen sugar. And I must not read this letter so loud
as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for she has
all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it, and the scrawl
seems hasty. We might have had more for three and fourpence. But I am
not the one to grumble about bad measure--as the boy said about old
Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may
compass it. Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!" The rector
threw down his spectacles, and gazed at his wife reproachfully. But she
smiled with superior innocence.

"What else could you expect, after all his years abroad? I cannot
make out the whole of it, for certain. But surely it is not beyond the
compass of masculine capacity."

"Yes, it is, Maria; and you know it well enough. No honest Englishman
can endure a word of French. Latin, or Greek, or even Hebrew--though I
took to that rather late in life. But French is only fit for women, and
very few of them can manage it. Let us hear what this Frenchman says."

"He is not a Frenchman, Joshua. He is an Englishman, and probably a very
fine one. I won't be sure about all of his letter, because it is so long
since I was at school; and French books are generally unfit to read. But
the general meaning is something like this:

'MY BELOVED AND HIGHLY VALUED AUNT,--Since I heard from you there
are many years now, but I hope you have held me in memory. I have the
intention of returning to the country of England, even in this bad time
of winter, when the climate is most funereal. I shall do my best to call
back, if possible, the scattered ruins of the property, and to institute
again the name which my father