If the epistle, soaking slowly there in the wet, had been committed
to Rosa's charge, she would have scorned to intercept it; would have
deposited it safely and punctually in the post-office. As it was, if
she left it alone, Frederic would never get it, and Mrs. Sutton
remain unconscious of its fate--unless some other passer-by should
perceive and rescue it from illegibility and dissolution; unless
Mabel should espy it on their return-walk, or, coming back, the next
moment, to seek her truant mate, catch sight of the snowy leaflet of
peace in its snuggery under the sedge.
A startled partridge flew over Rosa's head from the thither rising
ground, and in the belief that he was the harbinger of the approach
she dreaded, she dislodged the envelope from its covert, with a
quick touch of her little wand, and it floated down the stream.
Slowly--all too gradually at first--swinging lazily wound in the
eddies, catching, now against a jutting stone, now entangled by a
blade of grass--Rosa's heart in her throat as she watched it, lest
Mabel's footsteps should be audible upon the rocky path, Mabel's hat
appear above the spur of the hill. Then the channel caught it,
whirled it over and over, faster and faster, and sucked it downward.
Mrs. Sutton was at the tea-table with the girls that evening, when
Johnson, the sable Mercury, showed himself at the door, to inform
his superior that he had "got everything at de sto' she sent him fur
to buy."
"You mailed the letters, Johnson?" said the mild mistress, rather
anxiously.
"All on dem, Mistis!"
"The unconscionable liar!" thought Rosa, virtuously, "he ought to be
flogged! But it is none of my business to contradict him."
She did not say now, "My hands are clean!"