d do another time. Hence consolation.
After Mr. Pellew had taken a farewell, which may easily have been a
tender one, as nobody saw it, she heard particulars of the accident,
which shall be told here also, in due course.

Some embarrassment resulted from Gwen's headstrong action in bringing
the old lady away from the scene of this accident. She might have been
provided for otherwise, but Gwen's beauty and positiveness, and her
visible taking for granted that her every behest would be obeyed, had
swept all obstacles away. As for her Cousin Clotilda, she was secretly
chuckling all the while at the wayward young lady's reckless incurring
of responsibilities towards Sapps Court.

CHAPTER XXX

THE LETTER GWEN WROTE TO MR. TORRENS, TO TELL OF IT. MATILDA, WHO
PLAYED SCALES, BUT NOT "THE HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH." THE OLD LADY'S
JEALOUSY OF GRANNY MARROWBONE, AND DAVE'S FIDELITY TO BOTH. HOW
BEHEMOTH HICCUPPED, AND DAVE WENT TO SEE WHAT WAS BROKEN. THE
EARTHQUAKE AT PISA. IT WAS OWING TO THE REPAIRS. HOW PETER JACKSON
APPEARED BY MAGIC. HOW MR. BARTLETT SHORED NO. 7 UP TEMPORY, AND
THE TENANTS HAD TO MAKE THE BEST OF WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT. UNCLE MO's
ENFORCED BACHELOR LIFE

If love-letters were not so full of their writers' mutual satisfaction
with their position, what a resource amatory correspondence would be to
history!

In the letters to her lover with which Gwen at this time filled every
available minute, the amatory passages were kept in check by the hard
condition that they had to be read aloud to their blind recipient. So
much so that the account which she wrote to him of her visit to Sapps
Court will be very little the shorter for their complete omission.

It begins with a suggestion of suppressed dithyrambics, the suppression
to be laid to the door of Irene. But with sympathy for her, too--for how
can she help it? It then gets to business. She is going to tell "the
thing"--spoken of thus for the first time--in her own way, and to take
her own time about it. It is not even to be read fast, but in a
leisurely way; and, above all, Irene is not to look on ahead to see what
is coming; or, at least, if she does she is not to tell. Quite enough
for the present that he should know that she, Gwen, has escaped without
a scratch, though dusty. She addresses her lover, most unfairly, as "Mr.
Impatience," in a portion of the letter that seems devised expressly to
excite its reader