Joan Haste (1895) by H. Rider Haggard

Author:H. Rider Haggard [Haggard, H. Rider]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Delphi Main Series
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2020-12-20T15:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXI

A LUNCHEON PARTY

TWO DAYS AFTER her visit to Mr. Levinger Joan began her simple preparations for departure, for it was her intention to leave Bradmouth by the ten o’clock train on the following morning. First, however, after much thought she wrote this note to Henry: —

“Dear Sir Henry Graves, —

“Thank you for the kind message you sent asking after me. There was never much the matter, and I am quite well again now. I was very sorry to hear of the death of Sir Reginald. I fear that it must have been a great shock to you. Perhaps you would like to know that I am leaving Bradmouth for good and all, as I have no friends here and do not get on well; besides, it is time that I should be working for my own living. I am leaving without telling my aunt, so that nobody will know my address or be able to trouble me to come back. I do not fear, however, but that I shall manage to hold my own in the world, as I am strong and active, and have plenty of money to start with. I think you said that I might have the books which you left behind here, so I am taking them with me as a keepsake. If I live, they will remind me of the days when I used to nurse you, and to read to you out of them, long years after you have forgotten me. Good-bye, dear Sir Henry. I hope that soon you will be quite well again and happy all your life. I do not think that we shall meet any more, so again good-bye.

“Obediently yours, “Joan Haste.”

When Joan had finished her letter she read it once, kissed it several times, then placed it in an envelope which she directed to Sir Henry Graves. “There,” she thought, as she dropped it into the post-box, “I must go now, or he will be coming to look after me.”

On her way back to the inn she met Willie Hood standing outside the grocer’s shop, with his coat off and his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat.

“Will you do something for me, Willie?” she asked.

“Anything to oblige a customer, I am sure, Joan Haste,” answered that forward youth.

“Very well: then will you come round to-morrow morning with a hand-barrow at six o’clock time — not later, mind — and take a box for me to the station? If so, I will give you a shilling.”

“I’ll be there,” said Willie, “and don’t you bother about the shilling. Six o’clock, did you say? Very well, I’ll book it. Anything else to-day, miss?”

Joan shook her head, smiling, and returned home, where she busied herself with packing the more valued of her few possessions into the deal box that had been given her when she first went to school. Her wardrobe was not large, but then neither was the box, so the task required care and selection. First there were

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