The Argosy — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

The Mystery of Allan Grale. Q7 apology for opening letters is, I believe, waived in the case of tele- grams.” George took the hint. Perhaps it reminded him that to keep a tele- gram unopened might be at least as significant as to open it with undue eagerness. The words within were evidently few enough. Mrs. Vivian flashed on him one of her glances at the very instant when their meaning was entering his brain. His face was absolutely impassive: his guard on every feature was resolute. But that it did not relax was sufficient proof to his aunt that whatever news he had received was not what he had hoped for. ‘‘A message concerning a little matter only interesting to myself,” he said, as he carefully folded the telegram, restored it to its envelope, and put it in his pocket. ‘We elders,” said the General to Mrs. Grale, “are hardly able to get over our early impressions of telegrams. In our younger days they were rarely used except for tidings of moment—generally, of disaster or death. The very coming in of a telegram prepared one, as it were, fora shock. Now-a-days it probably comes to say that you have left your umbrella somewhere and it is being sent after you by parcel delivery. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Grale and her daughter departed, George attending them to their carriage. Once seated in it, Mary Anne gave her mother a sharp little lecture, connected with observing proper manners, and with her misplaced joke about George Vivian’s possible weariness of Dering people. Mrs. Grale made a faint defence. ‘You seemed so sorry that he should be tired of Dering,” she said. ‘¢ Now a person is never tired of a place till he is tired of the people in it. Saying the one thing was saying the other, Mary Anne, only in a different way.” “The way in which a thing is said makes all the difference,” snapped Mary Anne. ‘Well, to be sure!” sighed poor Mrs. Grale. ‘I’m willing to do my best, but I’m sure I’ve often made chance remarks like that before, without your taking me up so smartly.” This was a hint that Mary Anne was in an ill temper, and the young lady knew that perfectly. ‘There was something behind George Vivian’s visit to Edinburgh that she did not understand, and his apparent frankness had not been a perfect frankness. To go wander- ing about alone, looking at bloodstains in Holyrood palace, and “‘rasping the ring” on the doors of John Knox’s house, could never have been the all-sufficing enjoyment chosen by George Vivian for his holiday. And then that telegram ! As a matter of fact, George might have shown his telegram to the whole party, and they would have been only the more mystified. It was dated from ‘‘ Ragan, Ross-shire.” And its brief purport was this : ‘He came too soon and he is gone again.” WOL..- XY. H COnniclooolkks (CO)