Mrs. Dodd heard it all with quiet disapproval and cool incredulity. She
had seen so many young ladies healed of many young enthusiasms by a
wedding ring. But, while she was searching diligently in her mine of
ladylike English--mine with plenty of water in it, begging her
pardon--for expressions to convey inoffensively, and roundabout, her
conviction that Miss Hardie was a little, furious simpleton, the post
came and swept the subject away in a moment.
Two letters; one from Calcutta, one from Oxford.
They came quietly in upon one salver, and were opened and read with
pleasurable interest, but without surprise, or misgiving; and without the
slightest foretaste of their grave amid singular consequences.
Rivers deep and broad start from such little springs.
David's letter was of unusual length for him. The main topics were,
first, the date and manner of his return home. His ship, a very old one,
had been condemned in port: and he was to sail a fine new teak-built
vessel, the _Agra,_ as far as the Cape; where her captain, just recovered
from a severe illness, would come on board, and convey her and him to
England.
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