The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 171: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

163 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. few events which now happened, one succeeding the other with great rapidity. : They were these: The magistrate who had received Mabel’s deposition with re- gard tothe mendicant, could not, until the labors of the day were concluded, find time to write to Captain Morton, and when he did so it was at some length, and he missed that day’s post. Considering, too, as he likewise did, that the subject of his communication was of a strictly personal nature, for he had his own suspicions, from Mabel’s story, that, after all, she might be, granting the truth of all she said, a child of the captain’s—he took especial care to write the word “ private ” legibly upon the envelope of the letter. This letter, then, did not reach Morton Hall until after Cap- tain Morton and his brother had Jeft it, and as Mrs. Morton had been educated in decent society, and so'mever dreamed for one moment of opening a letter addressed to her husband and marked ‘‘ private,” the epistle of the magistrate remained unfortunately unanswered. ; That gentleman, too, had most particularly requested an an- swer by return of post; and indeed, it was one of those com- munications which ought to have been answered at once and without the least delay, inasmuch as it involved some important consequences to several people. But there the note remained in a drawer in Captain Morton’s study, where, by direction of Mrs. Morton, it was at once placed upon its arrival. Probably, had she guessed that it related to Mabel, she would have felt herself authorized at once in opening it; but such a suspicion never once crossed her mind, and so, devoured by anxicty and to by suspense, she remained in the same house with the very let- ter which would have given her the greatest amount of content- ment, inasmuch as it would have let her know that Mabel was alive and well, and only waiting for her dearest and best friends to come to her and claim her as their own. As regarded her comforts at the lodging-house, Mabel con- sidered she had nothing to complain of. She did not though, it must be premised, coutrast Mrs. Jen- kins’s second floor back room with her own delightful chamber at: Morton Hall, where she had passed so many happy hours. Ah, no! but dingy, dark, and, in some respects, dirty as was her present abode, it came out to her imagination in pleasant relief against the dreadful home she had had with the mendicant. ' She, too, waited with all the fever of natural impatience for the reply of Captain Morton, and how often she told herself that that reply would be prompt indeed. CHAPTER XXXIV. By inquiries of Mrs. Jenkins, who, never forgetting the ‘‘ little bill,” was always particularly civil to Mabel, the latter ascer- tained when a letter might, in the due course of events, come from the part of the country which Captain Morton resided in, comicbooks. com