"From Laurie," she said. Maggie ceased eating toast for a second, to
listen.
Then the old lady uttered a small cry of dismay.
"He thinks he can't come, after all," she said.
Maggie had a moment of very acute annoyance.
"What does he say? Why not?" she asked.
There was a pause. She watched Mrs. Baxter's lips moving slowly, her
glasses in place; saw the page turned, and turned again. She took
another piece of toast. There are few things more irritating than to
have fragments of a letter doled out piecemeal.
"He doesn't say. He just says he's very busy indeed, and has a great
deal of way to make up." The old lady continued reading tranquilly,
and laid the letter down.
"Nothing more?" asked Maggie, consumed with annoyance.
"He's been to the theatre once or twice.... Dear Laurie! I'm glad he's
recovering his spirits."
Maggie was very angry indeed. She thought it abominable of the boy to
treat his mother like that. And then there was the shooting--not much,
indeed, beyond the rabbits, which the man who acted as occasional
keeper told her wanted thinning, and a dozen or two of wild
pheasants--yet this shooting had always been done, she understood, at
Christmas, ever since Master Laurie had been old enough to hold a gun.
She determined to write him a letter.
When breakfast was over, with a resolved face she went to her room.
She would really tell this boy a home-truth or two. It was a--a
sister's place to do so. The mother, she knew well enough, would do no
more than send a little wail, and would end by telling the dear boy
that, of course, he knew best, and that she was very happy to think
that he was taking such pains about his studies. Someone must point
out to the boy his overwhelming selfishness, and it seemed that no one
was at hand but herself. Therefore she would do it.
She did it, therefore, politely enough but unmistakably; and as it was
a fine morning, she thought that she would like to step up to the
village and post it. She did not want to relent; and once the letter
was in the post-box, the thing would be done.
It was, indeed, a delicious morning. As she passed out through the
iron gate the trees overhead, still with a few brown belated leaves,
soared up in filigree of exquisite workmanship into a sky of clear
November blue, as fresh as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The genial sound of
cock-crowing rose, silver and exultant, from the farm beyond the road,
and the tiny street of the hamlet l
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