“The person who put up those shutters wasn’t fond of either light or air. But you wait, I’ll have them down, I like plenty of both. You heard Mr. Paine’s story about the shutters having made their appearance in a night? If they did, then there was witchcraft used, or I’m a Dutchman. It took weeks, if not months, to get them there. If the walls have to be pulled to pieces I’ll have them moved. Give me a week or two and you won’t know the place. I’ll turn it inside out and upside down. Because Uncle Benjamin had his ideas of what a house ought to be like, dark as pitch, and alive with rats, not to name blackbeetles, it doesn’t follow that his ideas are mine, so I’ll show him.”
“We can’t do all that, you and I alone together.”
“Catch me trying! Before we’re many hours older I’ll have an army of workmen turned into the house.”
“What about the conditions? No one is to be allowed to enter except us two, especially no man.”
“Bother the conditions! Do you think I mind them? Uncle Benjamin must have been stark staring mad to think that I would. If I’m only to live in such a place as this on such terms as those, then I’ll live out of it—that’s all. By the way, where’s the envelope which was in that box? I took it out of my dress pocket. ‘This envelope is for Mary Blyth, and is not to be opened by her till she is inside 84, Camford Street.’ Well, now Mary Blyth is inside 84, Camford Street—a nice, sweet, clean, airy place she’s found it! So I suppose that now she may open the envelope. Let’s hope that the contents are calculated to liven you up, because I feel as if I wanted something a little chirrupy.”
Inside was a sheet of blue writing paper. It was not over clean, being creased, and thumb-marked, and blotted too. On it was a letter, written by somebody who was not much used to a pen. I recognised Uncle Benjamin’s hand in a moment, especially because I remembered how, in his letters to mother,
