And now that chance promise, exacted by a chance meeting, had come home to roost with a vengeance. The rural postal carrier on his bicycle had just this morning left a letter from London with the address of Douglas Rivers, but with a. woman’ s flowing handwriting. Charles Cameron had opened it and sat up with a start It was from the housekeeper, who begged to inform him that her employer had died last week after a lingering illness, and that his final words had been to urge her to communicate with his dear friend Charles Cameron and to remind the latter of the promise that had been made last December. The letter went on, couched in sententious phrases, to inform Charles Cameron that Douglas Rivers had left almost no money for the child’ s welfare and that she, Mrs. Beddlington,- the housekeeper in question- had scarcely received her own wages for the past several months. She would be deeply grateful if Charles Cameron would arrange to have Mr. Rivers’ daughter come down to him at the earliest possible opportunity.
Charles Cameron winced and rubbed his chin reflectively. The devil take it, he thought to himself. How easy it is to pay lip service to a casual acquaintance and then to find that there is much more imposed upon one as a result of one’ s good breeding. If only he had not shown such a sympathetic ear to old Rivers that melancholy December day! But now the harm was done, and here was the proof.
What the devil would he do as the guardian of a little girl, particularly when he had no wife to serve as mother to the child? Of course, he could go about the business of hiring a housekeeper, but that would be to destroy his privacy and, in effect, to leave him as badly off as if he himself had taken a wife under his roof with all the pertaining responsibilities and encumbrances of such an act.