He tore open the envelope with his huge forefinger, and, bending down towards the lantern, began to read the letter.  It ran: 

    ’OLDCASTLE STREET,

    ’BURSLEY.

    ’DEAR WILL,

’I asked father to tell you, but he would not.  He said I must write.  Dear Will, I hope you will never see me again.  As you will see by the above address, I am now at Aunt Penrose’s at Bursley.  She is awful angry, but I was obliged to leave the village because of my shame.  I have been a wicked girl.  It was in July.  You know the man, because you asked me about him one Sunday night.  He is no good.  He is a villain.  Please forget all about me.  I want to go to London.  So many people know me here, and what with people coming in from the village, too.  Please forgive me.

    ‘S.  TRIMMER.’

After reading the letter a second time, Froyle folded it up and put it in his pocket.  Beyond a slight unaccustomed pallor of the red cheeks, he showed no sign of emotion.  Before the arrival of the postman he had been cleaning his master’s bicycle, which stood against the table.  To this he returned.  Kneeling down in some fresh straw, he used his dusters slowly and patiently—­rubbing, then stopping to examine the result, and then rubbing again.  When the machine was polished to his satisfaction, he wheeled it carefully into the stable, where it occupied a stall next to that of the cob.  As he passed back again, the animal leisurely turned its head and gazed at Froyle with its large liquid eyes.  He slapped the immense flank.  Content, the animal returned to its feed, and the weighted chain ran down with a rattle.

The fortnightly meeting of the Slate Club was to take place at eight o’clock that evening.  Froyle had employed part of the afternoon in making ready his books for the event, to him always so solemn and ceremonious; and the affairs of the club were now prominent in his mind.  He was sorry that it would be impossible for him to attend the meeting; fortunately, all the usual preliminaries were complete.

He took a piece of notepaper from a little hanging cupboard, and, sprawling across the table, began to write under the lantern.  The pencil seemed a tiny toy in his thick roughened fingers: 

    ’To Mr. Andrew McCall, Chairman Queen’s Arms Slate Club.

    ’DEAR SIR,

    ’I regret to inform you that I shall not be at the meeting
    to-night.  You will find the’ books in order....’

Here he stopped, biting the end of the pencil in thought.  He put down the pencil and stepped hastily out of the stable, across the yard, and into the hotel.  In the large room, the room where cyclists sometimes took tea and cold meat during the summer season, the long deal table and the double line of oaken chairs stood ready for the meeting.  A fire burnt warmly in the big grate, and the hanging lamp had been lighted.  On the wall was a large card containing the rules of the club, which had been written out in a fair hand by the schoolmaster.  It was to this card that Froyle went.  Passing his thumb down the card, he paused at Rule VII.: