He had no time now for another word, except that he had left his house at Beckley, just as it stood, to be let by his agent, to cover the expenses of this long voyage, and to get him out of two difficulties. He could not have left his dear child there alone; and, if he could, he would not have done so, for a most virulent fever had long been hanging about, and had now broken out hard by; and Dr. Splinters had strictly ordered, the moment he heard of it, that the dear child's hair should be cropped to her head, and burned or cast away, for nothing harboured infection as hair did. With a few words of blessing, and comfort, and love, and a promise to write from Demerara, and a fatherly hope that for his sake she would submit to Miss Patch in all things, and make the most of this opportunity for completing her course of Scriptural and historical reading, the dear old father had signed himself her "loving papa, W. O."
Grace would have been a very different girl from her own frank self, if she had even dreamed of suspecting the genuineness of this letter. It was in her father's crabbed, and upright, and queerly-jointed hand, from the first line to the last. For a moment, indeed, she had been surprised that he called himself her "papa," because he did not like the word, and thought it a piece of the foreign stuff which had better continue to be foreign. But there stood the word; and in his hurry how could he stop to such trifles? This letter had been lost; poor Grace could not imagine how, because she had taken such great care of it, and had slept with it under her pillow always. Nevertheless, it had disappeared, leaving tears of self-reproach in her downcast eyes, as she searched the wood for it. And this made her careful tenfold of the two letters she had received from George-town.
But now, as she came with her Sunday hat on, and her pretty Woodstock gloves, and her neat brown skirt looped up (for challenge of briers, and furze, and dog-rose), and, best of all, with the bloom on her cheeks, and the sparkle in her clear soft eyes, and the May sun making glory in her rolling clouds of new-grown hair--and, better than best, that smile of the heart filling the whole young face with light--she really looked as if it would be impossible to say "no" to her.