"You're sure three yards will be sufficient?" pattered the little storekeeper. "Well, of course you can come for more if you want. I'm not likely to be selling it out, and, if anybody should happen to come and ask for the rest of it, I'll get them to wait till you've finished trimming your hat. Dear me! If I haven't mislaid my scissors now! I was cutting flowers with them in the garden before breakfast, and I must have put them down in the middle of the sweet peas, or on the onion bed. It wouldn't take me five minutes to find them. You'd rather not wait? Then perhaps you'll excuse my using this." Without further apology, Miss Pearson seized the carving-knife with which she usually operated on the cheese and bacon, and, giving it a hasty wipe upon her apron, proceeded to saw through the ribbon, wrapping up the three yards in a scrap of newspaper. "I'm sorry I'm out of paper bags," she announced airily, "but the traveller only calls once in six months. Let me know how you get on with the hat, and, if you want any help that I can give you, just bring it across to me, and I'll do my best. By the by, I suppose you young ladies go to a fine boarding-school? Do you learn foreign languages there?" "Why, yes--French and German and Latin--most of us," replied Raymonde, rather astonished. "Then perhaps you'll be so good as to help me, for there's a letter arrived this morning I can make nothing of. It's certainly not in English, but whether it's in French or German or Russian or what, I can't say, for I'm no authority on languages." "Let me look at it, and I will do my best." Miss Pearson bustled to her postmistress's desk, and with an air of great importance produced the letter. Raymonde took it carelessly enough, but when she had grasped a few sentences her expression changed. She read it through to the end, then laid it down on the counter without offering to translate. "This is not addressed to you, I think," she remarked. "You're quite right, it's for Martha Verney; but she's no scholar, so I opened it for her, like I do for many folks in Shipley. I was quite taken aback when I couldn't make it out, and Martha said: 'Miss Pearson, if you can't read it, I'm sure nobody else can!' But I told her to leave it, in case anyone came into the shop who could." "Where's the envelope?" asked Raymonde briefly. "It's here. The writing is small and queer, isn't it? I had to put on both my pairs of glasses, one over the other, before I could see properly." "You've made a very great mistake," said Raymonde. "The letter is addressed to Mrs. Vernon, Poste Restante, Shipley." "Well, I never! I thought it was Martha Verney. There are no Vernons in Shipley." "There's a Mrs. Vernon at the camp. No doubt it's intended for her."