'Even if I do write I am almost sure she will not come.'
'But you must write in a way that will leave no option. Your mother will not object.'
'You must not fail. You must not fail to obtain the first favour I ask. Promise me you will succeed.'
As he was handing her into a hansom,' he said, 'May I ask you why you are so anxious my sister should come up?'
'That is my affair,' she whispered to him, as she curled herself up daintily in the corner.
'I am sure, mother, I cannot understand what he wants of me in London. He knows I do not like going about, and the idea of living in a hotel is hateful. What can he want of me?'
On the round, pale, sweet face of the girl there was a look of perplexity and pain as she raised her soft hazel eyes to her mother's, when Mrs Osborne had finished reading the letter addressed by her son to her daughter Kate.
'My dear Kate,' said the stout, silver-haired matron, laying down her gold-rimmed spectacles on the open page of her son's letter, and fixing her mild, contented eyes on her elder daughter, 'we know George has always good reasons for what he does and says, and I think we need not fear he is wrong in this case. He says he wants you in London very particularly, and no doubt he does. Now, if he wants you very particularly, of course you will go.'
'But, mother, I do not like to go. I'd much rather not. What can he want me for?'
The old woman took up the letter and spectacles again, set her spectacles on her nose, and read the letter from beginning to end. When she had finished she sat silent awhile, swinging her spectacles with one hand and keeping the letter open on the table before her with the other.
'He does not,' she said, 'give any reason for his wishing you to go to London; but, no doubt, Kate, he feels lonely and strange in that great place where he has no friends, and it may be he wants to give the place a look of home by having you with him. George is a good son and a good brother; and when we were not nearly so well off as we are now, he stood by us and denied himself many luxuries and amusements young men look for, in order that we might have everything in reason we could desire. So that altogether, Kate, you ought not to make any objection to going.'