“Dear Miss Amhurst,” and ended “Yours most sincerely, Alan Drummond.” It
gave some account of his doings since he bade good-bye to her. A sailor,
he informed her, needs little time for packing his belongings, and on
the occasion in question the Prince had been of great assistance. They
set out together for the early morning train, and said “au revoir” at
the station. Drummond had intended to sail from New York, but a friendly
person whom he met on the train informed him that the Liverpool liner
“Enthusiana” set out from Boston next day, so he had abandoned the New
York idea, and had taken passage on the liner named, on whose note-paper
he wrote the letter, which epistle was once more concealed as Dorothy
heard Katherine’s light step on the stair.
That impulsive young woman burst into the sewing room.
“We’re all going,” she cried. “Father, mother and Sabina. It seems
father has had an excellent offer to let the house furnished till the
end of September, and he says that, as he likes high life, he will put
in the time on the top of the Catskills. He abandons me, and says that
if he can borrow a shilling he is going to cut me off with it in his
will. He regrets the departure of the British Fleet, because he thinks
he might have been able to raise a real English shilling aboard. Dad
only insists on one condition, namely, that he is to pay for himself,
mother and Sabina, so he does not want a room with a balcony. I said
that in spite of his disinheritance I’d help the family out of my
salary, and so he is going to reconsider the changing of his will.”
“We will settle the conditions when we reach the Catskills,” said
Dorothy, smiling.
CHAPTER VII --“A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE NAVY”
CAPTAIN and Mrs. Kempt with Sabina had resided a week in the Matterhorn
Hotel before the two girls arrived there. They had gone direct to New
York, and it required the seven days to find a flat that suited them, of
which they were to take possession on the first of October. Then there
were the lawyers to see; a great many business details to settle, and
an architect to consult. After leaving New York the girls spent a day at
Haverstock, where Dorothy Amhurst bought a piece of land as shrewdly
as if she had been in the real estate business all her life. After this
transaction the girls drove to the station on the line connecting with
the inclined railway, and so, as Katherine remarked, were “wafted to
the skies on flowery beds of ease,” which she explained to her shocked
companion was all right, because it was a quotation from a hymn. When at
last they reached their hotel, Katherine was in ecstasies.
“Isn’t this heavenly?” she cried, “and, indeed, it ought to be, for I
understand we are three thousand feet higher than we were in New York,
and even the sky-scrapers can’t compete with such an altitude.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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