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Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series
Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series
“God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.”Longfellow.
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
I.—MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA
“Let us go and give her a turn,” cried the Squire.
Tod laughed. “What, all of us?” said he.
“To be sure. All of us. Why not? We’ll start to-morrow.”
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley, dismay in her mild tones. “Children and all?”
“Children and all; and take Hannah to see to them,” said the Squire. “You don’t count, Joe: you will be off elsewhere.”
“We could never be ready,” said the Mater, looking the image of perplexity. “To-morrow’s Friday. Besides, there would be no time to write to Mary.”
“Write to her!” cried the Squire, turning sharply on his heel as he paced the room in his nankeen morning-coat. “And who do you suppose is going to write to her? Why, it would cause her to make all sorts of preparation, put her to no end of trouble. A pretty conjurer you’d make! We will take her by surprise: that’s what we will do.”
“But if, when we got there, we should find her rooms are let, sir?” said I, the possibility striking me.
“Then we’ll go into others, Johnny. A spell at the seaside will be a change for us all.”
This conversation, and the Squire’s planning-out, arose through a letter we had just received from Mary Blair—poor Blair’s widow, if you have not forgotten him, who went to his end through that Gazette of Jerry’s. After a few ups and downs, trying at this thing for a living, trying at that, Mrs. Blair had now settled in a house at the seaside, and opened a day-school. She hoped to get on in it in time, she wrote, especially if she could be so fortunate as to let her drawing-room to visitors. The Squire, always impulsive and good-hearted, at once cried out that we would go and take it.