Chapter 137
Purr [Part 1]
"Meow! Meow! Meow!"
Finally done with this busy week after finishing the 5 dresses, the Stuart family were relaxing in the living room with the cats for the first time in a while.
"?? What's wrong, Ryuu-chan?"
Ryuu-chan, who often liked to meow noisily in the past, but had supposedly become calmer in this world, was now trying to get the family's attention.
"Meow! Meow!"
"......!? Eh?"
Because William was worried about Ryuu-chan, Emma strained her ears to hear what the cat was saying. Cat language was hard to catch if she didn't concentrate. The most important thing was the current mood and love.
"Nee-sama, is Ryuu-chan alright? Did she say anything about a stomach ache or something?"
"........."
"Nee-sama?"
"Meow! Meow! Meow!"
Contrary to the silent Emma, Ryuu-chan kept yelling. Emma, who had heard what Ryuu-chan was saying, got a bad premonition as she turned to face the whole family, trembling.
"Look... at the letter... addressed to Mother...? I guess?"
...Melsa had departed to Imperial Japan.
The letters Melsa received were all placed together inside a special box in her desk in the study, but the problem was which letter to read.
They hurried Martha to bring the box.
Because Melsa was the one who decided the family's attendance at tea parties and evening parties, the box had a great number of written invitations addressed to the Stuart family.
After Melsa departed, Leonard had checked the letters and sent a reply to the urgent ones on her behalf, though... Was there something he missed?
The family split the letters between themselves and started checking the opened letters one by one.
"Father, this tea party invitation is for the beginning of next week. But Mother is still in Imperial Japan by then, right?"
William showed Leonard an invitation from some Duke.
"Ah, because Melsa wouldn't be here, I declined their invitation immediately."
"Then, Father, what about this donation request from the church?"
"Hm? Oh, this is the one that I sent a hundred gold coins to but Joshua told me to make it one-tenth, right. Anyway, the request is coming next month and the month after that, so I can't reduce the next month's amount ......... Is a hundred gold coins every month a bad thing, perhaps?
" " "............" " "
"Father, please don't decide by yourself the next time this happens, okay?"
George seriously begged his father.
The Stuart family could finally eat full meals every day. But if they didn't watch Leonard closely, they could end up being poor in an instant.
Now that their mother wasn't here, they shouldn't let their father hold the wallet.
No matter how much money House Stuart donated or how many new church buildings were built, the slums wouldn't disappear. According to Joshua, donations were the necessary expense to avoid any unpleasantness, and they were not really used for the people.
The three siblings, formerly Japanese with little religious faith, had no objection to Joshua's words. What they did not touch would not hurt them[1].
[T/N 1: This is a literal translation of the Japanese idiom, which means not to rock the boat.]
Although the letters piled up into a large amount, when they worked on it together, it didn't take the family even an hour to get to the last one.
"Hm? Eh? Only the seal on this envelope is still left unopened?"
"Hm?"
"It's on the very bottom. Did it arrive the day Melsa left? I was running about all that day, so I guess I didn't see it?"
Melsa's trip to Imperial Japan had been decided at midnight the day before she left. It was inevitable that Leonard found himself fussing about the next morning.
It's no wonder that the letter that arrived that morning was left unchecked.
"............bad.........news........."
William, who held the last letter, slowly turned it around and showed the family its sealing wax.
"Ah."
"Ah."
"Ah."
The black wax seal as black as dripping ink was a letter from the Royal Family.
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