CHAPTER V

AN INVITATION

"A LETTER for me!" exclaimed Arthur, as he took his seat at the breakfast-table next morning and saw the letter beside his plate.

But Molly came in the next minute, before the letter could be opened. "Arthur, I have thought of a plan to get over the difficulty about Mamma's new dressing-gown," she said.

"All right! Get over the difficulty if you can, and if she won't agree, tell her what Mr. Andrews says about things if you like. But if she won't be persuaded to help with us, why, I may as well give up trying, and let things drift as they have done before."

"What would happen then?" asked Molly.

"Well, the last of the property would soon be eaten up, and Mamma's little bit would be all that was left, and as that ceases with her life, I suppose you and Annie would have to go out as governesses."

"Don't be horrid, Arthur," said Annie stiffly.

"Well, it's the truth, horrid as it may be," retorted her brother.

"Read your letter while we think over the truth," said Molly.

Arthur was not long reading his missive, and a pleasant smile crossed his face as he laid it down beside his plate and said: "Jack Brading wants me to go there to dinner, and spend the evening with them, to-morrow. They dine at seven. I suppose it is all right for shirts and tie?"

"There is a dress-shirt clean in your drawer, I know, but what about your coat? You will have to get a new one, I am sure," said his elder sister.

"Quite impossible!" said Arthur. "We can't afford it."

"But, Arthur, you can't go out to dinner without a coat!" said Molly. "And you know you have grown so fast lately that it won't fit you."

"I haven't tried it yet. Go and fetch it, Molly, and if it wants altering, I'll take it with me this morning and see whether Mr. Langley can get anything done with it in our tailoring shop."

Molly ran up and fetched the coat, and Arthur put it on. "You never will be able to wear that again!" exclaimed Molly in dismay.

"Not as it is. But they may be able to alter it, and I shall take it with me when I go."

"And if it cannot be made to fit you as a gentleman's coat should fit, you must order another to be made by to-morrow night, for it would never do to go to these Bradings looking anything but a gentleman."

"And that all depends upon wearing a dress-coat, I suppose?" said Arthur.

"Oh, Arthur, it is dreadful to have to talk of things like this!" said his elder sister.

Arthur laughed and made fun of the whole thing. But when he had started with his parcel, he too began to feel that it was no laughing matter after all. For what would be thought of him if he presented himself in the Brading dining-room wearing an ordinary black cloth coat. Of course they would know that he used to wear a dress-suit among his own set, and they might take it as a downright insult if he appeared in any other.

So he resolved to put his pride in his pocket so far as the manager of the tailoring department was concerned, and tell him that it was necessary for him to wear this coat if it could possibly be made to fit him, but that he could not afford to buy another.

He went to Mr. Langley's room, and was fortunate enough to see him as he came in, and the difficulties about the coat were explained to him.

"I understand, Mr. Murray," he said.

"You won't want to wear a dress-suit very often now, and of course you don't want to spend much money on what will be of little use. You leave the coat with me," he said, when Arthur put it on that he might see how he had outgrown it. "I shall be able to tell you by dinner-time whether we can alter it for you. One word before you go. I wish you would hunt through your drawer and desk upstairs, and see if that missing letter fell in either place when you were sorting them."

"What letter?" asked Arthur.

"Oh, I forgot! It was after you had left that Mr. Brading received a letter by the evening post from Lady Mary Murray, asking about an order she had sent to me a week before, and adding that the receipt had not been sent for the money she enclosed. I have never seen the letter. I was coming up to you this morning about it."

"I have always been very careful to deliver all the letters I get," said Arthur.

"Oh, yes! We are all satisfied with the way we get our morning letters now. I was only speaking of it to Mr. Brading the other day."

"Well, I will have a hunt upstairs, and see if it has fallen down anywhere, but I am pretty sharp to see if one does fall, and I pick it up at once."

"Well, look through your desk and drawers as soon as you can, and I hope you will find it."

Arthur went up to sort the letters for that morning, and looked in his desk at once, in the hope of being able to tell Mr. Langley that he had found it, when he went down with the bag. But he was scarcely surprised that he did not see anything of it, for if it had been handy, he would have seen it before. And so he went his round and resolved to make a thorough search when he got back.

"There is a letter missing," he said to Mr. Bristow, after he had wished that gentleman "Good-morning."

"Ah! I was just going to tell you the same thing," said the accountant. "You would have heard about it last night, if you had not been in such a hurry to get away. Mr. Brading and I were locking up when a letter was brought from Lady Mary Murray."

"Yes, and won't there be a fuss if we can't find that letter she sent a week ago!" laughed Arthur. "Mr. Langley has told me all about it. She'll turn the post office upside down."

"You know the lady, then?"

"Well, she's a sort of cousin, I suppose. Her husband was a cousin of Papa's, only that branch of the family happen to be rich, and we are poor. Still, Adrian—that is her only son—has always been very chummy with me, and we have called each other cousin, and got into scrapes together, for which I got all the blame if Lady Mary found it out."

This little gossip went on while Arthur was lifting each article out of his desk, and shaking every folded sheet of paper in the hope of seeing the letter fall on the table. After the desk had been thoroughly routed out, and the things put back in their places, the table-drawer was being treated to the same thorough scrutiny when Mr. Brading opened the door.

"You are looking for that letter we heard of last night, I suppose?" he said, after greeting Mr. Bristow and Arthur as usual.

"Yes, sir, I have turned out my desk, though I don't see how a letter could get in there," said Arthur.

"What about the paper basket?" said Mr. Brading, glancing under the table.

"Oh, that is always emptied before we come! You see it is empty now," said Arthur, pulling it out.

"Yes, I see; and I must write and tell Lady Mary that her letter must have gone astray in the post office."

"Won't she make a fuss at that post office!" said Arthur, when the door closed on Mr. Brading. "I'd give sixpence to be in the fun. I'll look-out for Adrian, if he has not gone to Oxford yet, and get him to tell me all about it. My lady will dance a real Irish jig round the drawing-room when she gets Mr. Brading's letter, and then—"

"You seem to forget that we are in the midst of the fun, as you call it, and that the lady is likely to make the fuss here," said Mr. Bristow, not without some amusement himself, for he had heard of this impulsive Irish lady before to-day.

"No such luck, I am afraid," said Arthur. "But I'll try and persuade my sister to call and see her to-morrow, and then we shall hear all about it."

"Very well, we must let that do for the present, then, and see to our work," said Mr. Bristow.

And Arthur took the hint, and settled down to his usual employment until dinner-time. The incident of the missing letter had almost passed from his mind when he found himself in the tailoring department once more and Mr. Langley asked him if he had been able to find the letter.

"Oh! I beg your pardon for not coming to tell you that I have turned out everything I have got up there, and cannot find it. Can you do anything with my coat?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, the foreman thinks he can make a very good job of it. He would like you to go to the workroom as you return from dinner, and then he will be able to fit it on you. He thinks he can make it a very good fit. I wish we could trace that letter, though," he added in a more serious tone. "Lady Mary will—"

"Don't I know it!" laughed Arthur, interrupting him. "Won't she make them sit up at the post office when she hears we haven't got her precious letters!"

Mr. Langley looked at Arthur in dumb amazement. "This is no laughing matter for me, Murray," he said. "You forget there was money in the lost letter, as well as an order, and she is one of our most particular customers."

"Oh, yes, I know her!" said Arthur lightly. Then, seeing how serious Mr. Langley looked, he added: "Of course I am very sorry the letter cannot be found, and I hope it will turn up in one of Lady Mary's pockets. But I don't see why we should trouble our heads with it. The post office must have lost it, if ever she posted it, and it wouldn't be the first time she has left a letter in her pocket instead of putting it into the pillar-box. Don't worry, Mr. Langley; there is no accounting for what Lady Mary may do."

When Arthur fitted his coat on, a little later in the day, he was greatly pleased with it. They had been able to lengthen the sleeves and let it out at the seams, so that it fitted him as easily and comfortably as a new coat could have done, and he went home in the evening to tell his sisters that he had found Molly's plan of turning old clothes into new ones had answered admirably.

Molly clapped her hands with delight at the announcement. "I am glad I thought of it," she said, "for we shall be able to please Mamma with a smart 'new-old' dressing-gown at the cost of a few shillings at the most. Really, it is quite interesting to be poor, when it sets your wits to work to make the best of things you have got, instead of buying new ones."

But her elder sister shook her head at this heresy. "It may please you, Molly, for the present; but wait until our clothes get very shabby and we want a change from those we have been wearing so long," she said in a serious tone.

"Well, it will be time enough, as you say, when we have got to do it, so we won't begin worrying over it now. I am just taking a little extra care of my best dresses, to make sure that they look nice as long as possible, that I may not want new ones yet awhile. What are you laughing at me for, Arthur?" she suddenly asked.

"I am not laughing at you, Molly, but at something that happened at the shop."

"Oh, Arthur, don't call it a shop!" interrupted his elder sister crossly. "Say office if you like, we shall know what you mean. I expect Aunt Mary will go on when she hears what you have done."

"It is about Lady Mary I was laughing," said Arthur.

He never would call her Aunt Mary, for the two seemed to take a delight in annoying each other when they met, and Mr. Murray had never tried to smooth matters between them. She, too, was quite as prejudiced against him, because he was generally the ringleader in the mischief her son had often got into when they were both younger. In her anger over some escapade that had caused her annoyance, she had told Arthur she would never own him as a relative again, and he had retorted that he would never call her aunt any more; and both had kept their word, and harboured a dislike for each other ever since.

So Arthur recounted with great glee that a letter sent by Lady Mary, with some money in it, had been lost in the post, and then he asked Molly to imagine what the scene would be like when she went to the local post office and demanded her money back.

Molly laughed and mimicked the lady, and she and Arthur were trying to outdo each other in imitating her mannerisms when Annie suddenly said: "You stupid things, cannot you see that this may be very serious for Arthur? He has to open the letter-bag at Brading's, and she might—they might—there is no telling what people might say."

"Pigs might fly," suggested the irreverent Molly.

"Aunt Mary might say spiteful things about you, Arthur, if she heard that you had the handling of her letters."

"Ah, she might! But how is she to hear? I have not seen Adrian for a long time. I expect he has gone to Oxford long ago."

"I have not seen him, or Aunt Mary either, for some time," said Annie. "Perhaps she has heard that you have gone to that shop and is quite offended about it," suggested Annie.

"Let her be offended then," said Arthur.

"Well, I am not so fond of flying in people's faces as you are," retorted Annie.

"All right! Go and see Lady Mary to-morrow, and tell her we are all greatly concerned that she has not been to see us lately, and then perhaps she will tell you what she is going to do to those careless post office people for losing her letter with money in it."

There was another explosion of laughter over this, but Annie shook her head at the offered suggestion.

"I don't want to have to tell her what you have done, Arthur," she said; "I would rather she heard it from other people first, and had got over it a bit before I saw her."

"What nonsense, Annie; as if Lady Mary cares two straws what happened to me! We renounced all relationship to each other long ago, and as long as Adrian doesn't come here too often she won't trouble herself about where I go, or what I do; never fear."

"Well, I don't want to go to see her just now. And I do wish you had been more careful of her letter, if it is you who have lost it."

"You need not be so cross, Annie," said Molly. "I am sure Arthur would not have lost the letter if he could have helped it."

"And it has to be proved first that the letter ever passed through my hands," said Arthur in a more serious tone.

"Don't let it trouble you, Arthur," said Molly soothingly.

"It isn't likely I shall," replied Arthur scornfully. "Nobody but Annie would think of blaming me for such a thing."

And Arthur went up to his mother's room whistling a lively air and full of pleasant anticipations of seeing some of his old friends and school-fellows the next evening, for he had heard incidentally that several other lads besides himself were invited to spend the evening at Mr. Brading's house.