How was she supposed to know he was waiting on a letter from her? They'd been writing nicely and all and then he'd stopped writing and a week or two later she found out he was in England. He'd never replied to her last letter, not to respond to it or at the very least inform her he was back! Ellory remembered her last letter well, too. She'd asked him what fun things he had in mind for them and he'd never replied. Ellory had thought long and hard about whether it was a mistake to send that. Maybe the prospect of them doing fun things had turned Ben off, in a way. Maybe he'd imagined them in the process of having fun and he'd realized he didn't care for it at all!

But he was saying now, that he wanted her to write him. Or maybe it was an excuse to lay all the blame on her for their lack of correspondance. Ellory decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She was happy to see him and she didn't want to alienate him after such an absence.

"Snowball is alright, but he couldn't exactly perfom his duties as an owl if I didn't know where to send him to. The poor thing had to fly all the way to Canada in the harshest days of December to deliver a letter that never got a reply." Her accusations were more direct now, though Ellory's letter was as soft as before. They didn't need to cause a scene there. Evelyn wasn't with her, as Reuben thought, but her chaperone would be just as distressed if they started fighting.