Joanna laughed, and said that coming to the country was a new experience and she was going to enjoy it.
"I'm afraid you'll be terribly bored," I said remorsefully.
"No, I shan't.
I really was fed up with all my crowd, and though you won't be sympathetic I really was very cut up about Paul.
It will take me a long time to get over it."
I was skeptical over this.
Joanna's love affairs always run the same course.
She has a mad infatuation for some completely spineless young man who is a misunderstood genius.
She listens to his endless complaints and works to get him recognition.
Then, when he is ungrateful, she is deeply wounded and says her heart is broken - until the next gloomy young man comes along, which is usually about three weeks later.
I did not take Joanna's broken heart very seriously, but I did see that living in the country was like a new game to my attractive sister.
She entered with zest into the pastime of returning calls.
We duly received invitations to tea and to bridge, which we accepted, and issued invitations in our turn.
To us, it was all novel and entertaining - a new game.
And, as I say, when the anonymous letter came, it struck me, at first, as amusing too.
For a minute or two after opening the letter, I stared at it uncomprehendingly.
Printed words had been cut out and pasted on a sheet of paper.
The letter, using terms of the coarsest character, expressed the writer's opinion that Joanna and I were not brother and sister.
"Hullo," said Joanna.
"What is it?"
"It's a particularly foul anonymous letter," I said.
I was still suffering from shock.
Somehow one didn't expect that kind of thing in the placid backwater of Lymstock.
Joanna at once displayed lively interest.
"No?
What does it say?"
In novels, I have noticed, anonymous letters of a foul and disgusting character are never shown, if possible, to women.
It is implied that women must at all cost be shielded from the shock it might give their delicate nervous systems.
I am sorry to say it never occurred to me not to show the letter to Joanna. I handed it to her at once.
She vindicated my belief in her toughness by displaying no emotion but that of amusement.
"What an awful bit of dirt!
I've always heard about anonymous letters, but I've never seen one before.
Are they always like this?"
"I can't tell you," I said.
"It's my first experience, too."
Joanna began to giggle.
"You must have been right about my make-up, Jerry.
I suppose they think I just must be an abandoned female!"
"That," I said, "coupled with the fact that our father was a tall, dark, lantern-jawed man and our mother a fair-haired blue-eyed little creature, and that I take after him and you take after her."
Joanna nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes, we're not a bit alike.
Nobody would take us for brother and sister."
"Somebody certainly hasn't," I said with feeling.
Joanna said she thought it was rightfully funny.
She dangled the letter thoughtfully by one corner and asked what we were to do with it.
"The correct procedure, I believe," I said, "is to drop it into the fire with a sharp exclamation of disgust."
I suited the action to the word, and Joanna applauded.
"You did that beautifully," she said.
"You ought to have been on the stage.
It's lucky we still have fires, isn't it?"