"It's late," she said, "and I must go home, as mamma will be expecting me."
Cherry had almost replied that she had not been in so great a hurry once before, when she had stood in the churchyard with another companion; but she thought of Rachel's reproachful face when her last little joke had been uttered, and she refrained.
"She's over head and ears in love," said Cherry to her sister, when Rachel was gone.
"I'm afraid she has been very foolish," said Martha, seriously.
"I don't see that she has been foolish at all. He's a very nice fellow, and as far as I can see he's just as fond of her as she is of him."
"But we know what that means with young men," said Martha, who was sufficiently serious in her way of thinking to hold by that doctrine as to wolves in sheep's clothing in which Mrs. Ray had been educated.
"But young men do marry,—sometimes," said Cherry.
"But not merely for the sake of a pretty face or a good figure. I believe mamma is right in that, and I don't think he'll come back again."
"If he were my lover I'd have him back," said Cherry, stoutly;—and so they went away to the brewery.
Rachel on her way home determined that she would write her letter that night. Her mother was to read it when it was written; that was understood to be the agreement between them; but there would be no reason why she should not be alone when she wrote it. She could word it very differently, she thought, if she sat alone over it in her own bedroom, than she could do immediately under her mother's eye. She could not pause and think and perhaps weep over it, sitting at the parlour table, with her mother in her arm-chair, close by, watching her. It needed that she should write it with tears, with many struggles, with many baffled attempts to find the words that would be wanted,—with her very heart's blood. It must not be tender. No; she was prepared to omit all tenderness. And it must probably be short;—but if so its very shortness would be another difficulty. As she walked along she could not tell herself with what words she would write it; but she thought that the words would perhaps come to her if she waited long enough for them in the solitude of her own chamber.