A Fair Fraud — page 262: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Fair Fraud 251 that having worked fearfully hard for the last few weeks he now felt he could allow himself to take a few days’ holiday, and would like to run down to Crookthorpe from Friday to Monday next if Mrs Drury would be kind enough to put him up. ‘It rests with you to say whether you wish me to come,’ the letter went on to say. ‘I place myself entirely in your hands, and shall wait anxif@sly to know whether you are quite certain that you would like to see me again.’ Marion handed the letter in silence to her aunt, who read it and passed it on to her husband. ‘It cannot be called a proposal of marriage. at all,’ she remarked dubiously and a little crossly, ‘and if I were you, my dear Marion, I would not reckon upon it; a man could very easily shuffle out of a letter of that kind if he wanted to; it 1s very ambiguous and unsatis- factory to my mind.’ ‘Will you invite Mr Naylor to come here on Friday next, aunt? May I say that he may come?’ was Marion’s only re;'ly. ‘Oh, yes, certainly, if you think it good enough,’ replied Mrs Drury rather coldly and grudgingly, for she immediately thought ‘now I shall have to look out for another companion, I suppose. ’ Mr Drury having added his consent, Marion _went her way and wrote her Jetter. GORMGIOO (Si C(O) i