"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over.
But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast."
Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read.
"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's Adrienne, who wants to have her say."