“I am not. I never was suspicious. You are a rude girl to say so! If it is not money, you may depend upon it, it is something worse!” “What worse can you mean?” “That Walter has got into some scrape.” “Why should he not write himself if it were so?” “He is too much ashamed, and gets his friend to do it for him. I know the ways of young men!” “Perhaps he is ill!” said Molly. “Perhaps. It is long since I saw a letter from him! I am never allowed to read or hear one!” “Can you wonder at that, when you are always abusing him? If he were my son, I should take care you never saw a scrap of his writing! It makes me wild to hear those I love talked of as you talk of him--always with a sniff!” “Love, indeed! Do you suppose no one loves him but you?” “His father loves him dearly!” “How dare you hint that I do not love him!” “If yours is love, auntie, I wish I may never meet it where I’ve no chance of defending myself!” Molly had a hot temper where her friends were concerned, though she would bear a good deal without retorting. “There!” said Aunt Ann, giving her the letter; “put that on the mantel-piece till he comes.” Molly took it, and gazed wistfully at it, as if fain to read it through the envelope. She had had that morning a strange and painful dream about Walter--that he lay in his coffin, with a white cat across his face. “What if he _should_ be ill, auntie?” she said. “Who ill?” “Walter, of course!” “What then? We must wait to know!” “Father wouldn’t mind if we just opened it to make sure it was not about Walter!” “Open my brother’s letter! Goodness gracious, what next! Well, you _are_ a girl! I should just like to see him after you had opened one of his letters!” Miss Hancock had herself once done so--out of pure curiosity, though on another pretense--a letter, as it happened, which he would rather not have read himself than have had her read, for it contained thanks for a favor secretly done; and he was more angry than any one had ever seen him. Molly remembered the occurrence, though she had been too young to have it explained to her; but Molly’s idea of a father, and of Richard Colman as that father, was much grander than that of most children concerning fathers. There is indeed a much closer relation between some good men and any good child than there is between far the greater number of parents and their children.