egan by saying that Dolly had left behind her certain
small properties which had now been made up in a parcel and sent by
the railway, carriage paid. "But they weren't mine at all," said
Dolly, alluding to certain books in which she had taken delight. "She
means to give them to you," said Priscilla, "and I think you must
take them." "And the shawl is no more mine than it is yours, though
I wore it two or three times in the winter." Priscilla was of opinion
that the shawl must be taken also. Then the letter spoke of the
writer's health, and at last fell into such a strain of confidential
gossip that Mrs. Stanbury, when she read it, could not understand
that there had been a quarrel. "Martha says that she saw Camilla
French in the street to-day, such a guy in her new finery as never
was seen before except on May-day." Then in the postscript Dorothy
was enjoined to answer this letter quickly. "None of your short
scraps, my dear," said Aunt Stanbury.

"She must mean you to go back to her," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"No doubt she does," said Priscilla; "but Dolly need not go because
my aunt means it. We are not her creatures."

But Dorothy answered her aunt's letter in the spirit in which it had
been written. She asked after her aunt's health, thanked her aunt for
the gift of the books,--in each of which her name had been clearly
written,--protested about the shawl, sent her love to Martha and her
kind regards to Jane, and expressed a hope that C. F. enjoyed her new
clothes. She described the cottage, and was funny about the cabbage
stumps in the garden, and at last succeeded in concocting a long
epistle. "I suppose there will be a regular correspondence," said
Priscilla.

Two days afterwards, however, the correspondence took altogether
another form. The cottage in which they now lived was supposed to be
beyond the beat of the wooden-legged postman, and therefore it was
necessary that they should call at the post-office for their letters.
On the morning in question Priscilla obtained a thick letter from
Exeter for her mother, and knew that it had come from her aunt.
Her aunt could hardly have found it necessary to correspond with
Dorothy's mother so soon after that letter to Dorothy had been
written had there not arisen some very peculiar cause. Priscilla,
after much meditation, thought it better that the letter should be
opened in Dorothy's absence, and in Dorothy's absence the following
letter was read both by Priscilla an