’Nuncombe Putney, 1st May, 186

My dear Sister Stanbury,

We are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer, which my daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of affectionate gratitude.  I think you will find her docile, good-tempered, and amiable; but a mother, of course, speaks well of her own child.  She will endeavour to comply with your wishes in all things reasonable.  She; of course, understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will come back home on the expression of your wish that it should be so.  And she will, of course, do the same, if she should find that living in Exeter does not suit herself.’ (This sentence was inserted at the instance of Priscilla, after much urgent expostulation.) ’Dorothy will be ready to go to you on any day you may fix after the 7th of this month.

Believe me to remain,

Your affectionate sister-in-law,

P. Stanbury.’

‘She’s going to come,’ said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the letter in her hand.

‘I never doubted her coming, ma’am,’ said Martha.

’And I mean her to stay, unless it’s her own fault.  She’ll have the small room upstairs, looking out front, next to mine.  And you must go and fetch her.’

‘Go and fetch her, ma’am?’

‘Yes.  If you won’t, I must.’

’She ain’t a child, ma’am.  She’s twenty-five years old, and surely she can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from Lessboro’.’

’There’s no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those railway carriages, and I won’t have her come by herself.  If she is to live with me, she shall begin decently at any rate.’

Martha argued the matter, but was of course beaten, and on the day fixed started early in the morning for Nuncombe Putney, and returned in the afternoon to the Close with her charge.  By the time that she had reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to the dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving that in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and partly, perhaps, by finding that the young woman’s manner to herself was both gentle and sprightly.  She knew well that gentleness alone, without some back-bone of strength under it, would not long succeed with Miss Stanbury.  ’As far as I can judge, ma’am, she’s a sweet young lady,’ said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her mistress, who had retired upstairs to her own room, in order that she might thus hear a word of tidings from her lieutenant, before she showed herself on the field of action.

‘Sweet!  I hate your sweets,’ said Miss Stanbury.  ’Then why did you send for her, ma’am?’

’Because I was an old fool.  But I must go down and receive her, I suppose.’