I will bring it at once." He ran away and quickly returned, placing a rather bulky parcel in the girl's hands.
"You read it, Uncle John," she said.

"There can't be anything private in Tato's letter, and perhaps she has explained everything." He put on his glasses and then took the missive and deliberately opened it.

Tato wrote a fine, delicate hand, and although the English words were badly spelled she expressed herself quite well in the foreign tongue.

With the spelling and lack of punctuation corrected, her letter was as follows: "Dear, innocent, foolish Patsy: How astonished you will be to find I have vanished from your life forever; and what angry and indignant words you will hurl after poor Tato! But they will not reach me, because you will not know in which direction to send them, and I will not care whether you are angry or not.
"You have been good to me, Patsy, and I really love you--fully as much as I have fear of that shrewd and pretty cousin of yours, whose cold eyes have made me tremble more than once.

But tell Beth I forgive her, because she is the only clever one of the lot of you.