“You’ll live with her,” said Joshua.
“It’s more as flesh and blood can bear.”
“Flesh and blood can bear a good deal more’n you think for,” said Joshua, and then he delivered up two letters and drove off toward the barn.
“If those are letters,” said Aunt Mary from her pillow the instant she heard the front door close, “I’d like ’em. I’m a great believer in readin’ my own mail, an’ another time, Lucinda, I’ll thank you to bring it as soon as you get it an’ not stand out on the porch hollyhockin’ with Joshua for half an hour while I wait.”
Lucinda delivered up the letters without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached to the phrase, “holly-hocking.”
Aunt Mary turned the letters through eagerly.
“My lands alive!” she said suddenly, “if here isn’t one from Mitchell,—the dear boy. Well, I never did!—Lucinda, open the blinds to the other window, too—so I—can—see to—” her voice died away,—she was too deep in the letter to recollect what she was saying.
Mitchell wrote:
MY DEAR MISS WATKINS:—
We are sitting in a row with ashes on the heads of our cigarettes mourning, mourning, mourning, because we have had the news that you are ill. As usual it is up to me to express our feelings, so I have decided to mail them and the others agree to pay for the ink.