Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/258

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN This was from Edna, stating that she and Ralph and the two negroes had just arrived in New York, from which point they were to sail for Havre. Edna wished very much to see Mrs. Cliff before she left the country, and wrote that if it would be convenient for that lady, she would run up to Plainton and stay a day or two with her. There would be time enough for this be fore the steamer sailed. When she read this brief note, Mrs. Cliff sprang out of bed.

"Edna come here!" she exclaimed. "That would be simply ruin! But I must see her. I must tell her everything, and let her help me."

As soon as she was dressed, she went down-stairs and told Willy that she would start for New York that very afternoon. She had received a letter from Mrs. Horn, and it was absolutely necessary to see her before she sailed. With only a small leather bag in her hand, and nearly all her ready money and her peace-destroying draft sewed up inside the body of her dress, she left Plainton, and when her friends and neighbors heard that she had gone, they could only ascribe such a sudden departure to the strange notions she had imbibed in foreign parts. When Plainton people contemplated a journey, they told everybody about it, and took plenty of time to make preparations; but South Americans and Californians would start anywhere at a moment's notice. People had thought that Mrs. Cliff was too old to be influenced by association in that way, but it was plain that they had been mistaken, and there were those who were very much afraid that even if the poor lady had got whatever ought to be coming to her from the Valparaiso business, it would have been of little use to her. Her old principles of 244