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Updated: May 29, 2025
As I had found it before, hard work proved now to be the best specific for dull spirits, and during the next few days I gave the remedy a full trial. It seemed ages before any letter came from Packworth, and I was dying to hear. For meanwhile all sorts of doubts and fears took hold of me. How had that strange family meeting gone off?
And now the long-looked-for time had arrived when Jack and his father were to pay their promised visit to Packworth. I had seen them both half rejoicing in, half dreading the prospect; and now that I saw them actually start, I scarcely knew whether most to pity or envy them. It was a lonely evening for me, the evening after I had seem them off.
We did not get a single holiday during that period, so that my scheme of walking over from Brownstroke, and finding him out at Packworth, never came off. And I only contrived to write to him once. That was the first time, the Sunday after he had left, when the Henniker saw me dropping my letter into the post.
"Wait a bit," said he, as I was taking it up, and turning to leave the office. "Wait a bit." He went back to the pigeon-hole, and after another sorting produced, very dusty and dirty, my first letter. "That's for `J' too," said he. Then Jack had never been to Packworth, or got my letter, posted at such risk. He must have given me a false address.
All I heard was that the reason he didn't get my letters at Packworth was that he had told me, or thought he had told me, to address my letters to "T," and I had always addressed them to "J." But even had I addressed them correctly, he would only have received the first, as a fortnight after he left Stonebridge he went to London, where he had hitherto been working as a grocer's shop-boy.
Take an easy evening now, and go to bed early. You'll be all the fresher for it to-morrow." So, instead of study, we fell-to talking, and somehow got on to the subject of the home at Packworth. "By the way, Fred," said Jack, "I got a letter from you the other day." "From me?" I cried; "I haven't written to you for months."
If she were to hear of his story from any other source, he says he would never dare see her again. It will be far better to tell her. But I wish it was over." "So do I," I said. "Poor Mary!" I had got quite into the way of talking of her to Jack by her Christian name, as if she were my sister as well as his. "I suppose," said I, "she will still live with Mrs Shield at Packworth?"
Jack's colour changed as he took the letter and looked at it. He evidently recognised the cramped, ill-formed hand in which it was addressed. "It's from Packworth!" he exclaimed, as he eagerly tore open the envelope. I don't think he intended the remark for me, for we had never once referred either to his home or his relatives since the first day we were together in London.
I thought the Henniker and Mrs Nash were the only lady friends you ever had? Where was it?" "At Packworth, of all places," I said. "It was that day I went over to try and find you out just before we came up to London, you know. I was walking back to Brownstroke, and met the pony bolting down the road." Jack seemed suddenly very much interested. "What sort of little girl was it?" he asked.
"No; Mr Barnacle is down at the bank now." "Doubleday," said Crow, entering at this moment, "the governors want you sharp." "They are going to send you for a policeman," I said. "If anything happens, Doubleday, will you please telegraph to Smith, at Mrs Shield's, Packworth, and tell him to come to me, and also find out Billy, the shoeblack, and say I want to see him."
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