Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad
A thin-faced, dark-eyed man had called for her and taken her away,
placing her baggage on the box of the carriage. Yes, she had paid her
bill and tipped the servants liberally.
"Just as I suspected!" cried Patsy. "That horrid duke has forced her to
leave us. Perhaps he was jealous, and feared we would want to keep her
always. Was she weeping and miserable, porter?"
"No, signorina. She laughed and was very merry. And--but I had
forgotten! There is a letter which she left for the Signorina D'Oyle."
"Where?"
"In the office. I will bring it at once."
He ran away and quickly returned, placing a rather bulky parcel in the
girl's hands.
"You read it, Uncle John," she said. "There can't be anything private in
Tato's letter, and perhaps she has explained everything."
He put on his glasses and then took the missive and deliberately opened
it. Tato wrote a fine, delicate hand, and although the English words
were badly spelled she expressed herself quite well in the foreign
tongue. With the spelling and lack of punctuation corrected, her letter
was as follows:
"Dear, innocent, foolish Patsy: How astonished you will be to find I
have vanished from your life forever; and what angry and indignant words
you will hurl after poor Tato! But they will not reach me, because you
will not know in which direction to send them, and I will not care
whether you are angry or not.
"You have been good to me, Patsy, and I really love you--fully as much
as I have fear of that shrewd and pretty cousin of yours, whose cold
eyes have made me tremble more than once. But tell Beth I forgive her,
because she is the only clever one of the lot of you. Louise thinks she
is clever, but her actions remind me of the juggler who explained his
tricks before he did them, so that the audience would know how skillful
he was."
"But oh, Patsy, what simpletons you all are! And because you have been
too stupid to guess the truth I must bother to write it all down. For it
would spoil much of my satisfaction and enjoyment if you did not know
how completely I have fooled you.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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