I send you my love-filled blessings too, and over again.
Most assuredly your Verline
PS: By the way-though this is not so important-you will not be surprised, I am sure, to learn that the day before yesterday, Gosling ran away from us, and cannot be found. I am ashamed to be so uncharitable, but the mood here has lightened considerably. Write me as soon as you can, please! Also, Master Craumpalin wishes to know if you have had any use for his potives.
While Rossamund read the letter, he was first moved with joy, but then to increasing alarm. Had Master Fransitart, ill as he was, finally repented of letting him go and now planned to fetch him back to the oppression of the foundlingery? Was this the big secret? It's the first week of Pulchrys now… He counted the months on his knuckles: Pulchrys, Brumis, Pulvis, Heimio, Herse, Orio: that means he'll be here in four, maybe five months!
As to the news about Gosling: well, Verline was right-Rossamund was not surprised. Indeed, he was glad for Verline and the masters' sakes, and for the littlest children too, that his old foe had run off.
There came a heavy hammering at the door of his cell. A discouragingly serious voice bellowed, "Douse lanterns!"
Rossamund scrambled to unfold the blankets and pillow supplied, and wrestled them over the unsavory-looking mattress.
His bright-limn still glowing, the hammering soon came again. "You don't want to start your career with us like this, son. Get your lantern out and get to bed!" That voice held promise of all manner of things terrible, unguessable.
Quickly turning the bright-limn over, so that its light would dim and gradually expire, Rossamund completed making his bed in the faint twilight of its dying glow, undressing in pitch blackness. Finally, as he lay, restlessly shifting, with many creakings and groans of the metal frame, against all the uncomfortable lumps of the mattress, his fading thoughts swam. They dwelt for a moment on Verline, and her worries, but it was Master Fransitart, his failing health and his intended visit that troubled him most. Rossamund did not know how to feel about his old dormitory master now. He wished the old vinegaroon would just stay in Boschenberg and leave him to his new path. With a flash of guilt it occurred to Rossamund that Fransitart might not survive the journey; though he was already regretting the intended visit, he would hate any harm to come to his old dormitory master even more.
In the orbit of his sleepy musings, he wondered too if Europe, the duchess lahzar, would indeed return as she had said and ask him once more to be her factotum. Worry for poor Freckle stirred him for a moment, and this became concern for where Fouracres might be that night. So spun his tired thoughts.
As sleep slowly overtook him, he marveled that, through the many twists of what should have been a straightforward journey, he had managed to bumble, still intact, still healthy, to his destination. At last, for better or for worse, he was where he was originally destined, to finally become a lamplighter.
Tomorrow he would wake to the beginning of a whole new life.