When his letter was due she had
expected it, as usual, and had walked to the post-office, the two miles
and a half, for the sake of the letter and having something to do. She
could not believe it when the postmaster handed her only her father's
weekly paper, she stood a moment, and then asked, "Is that all?" And the
next week came, and the next, and the next, and no letter from him; and
then she had ceased, with a dull sense of loss and disappointment, to
expect any answer at all. Her mother inquired briskly every day if her
letter had come and urged her to write a note asking if he had received
it, for he might be waiting for it all this time, but shyness and pride
forbade that, and afterward his mother called and spoke of something
that he must have read in that letter. She felt how she must have
colored, and was glad that her father called her, at that moment, to help
him shell corn for the chickens.
When she returned to the house, brightened up and laughing, her mother
told her that Mrs. Rheid had said that Hollis had begun to write to her
regularly and she was so proud of it. "She says it is because you are
going away and he wants her to hear directly from him; I guess, too, it's
because he's being exercised in his mind and thinks he ought to have
written oftener before; she says her hand is out of practice and the
Cap'n hates to write letters and only writes business letters when it's a
force put. I guess she will miss you, Marjorie."
Marjorie thought to herself that she would.
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