Another thought—.
—Will you forgive this chapter for being so much about just my meditations? There are times in one's life when thought brings about changes as big as any act could do. One of these times came to me in that spotless cool dairy, with me flushed and hatless, toiling at that churn.
—It swung back to "Yes" again.
"I must tell him," I mused. "I never answered his letter. How rude that must seem to him! He said not to write if he were not to come. But a letter demands a line just to say it's been received. I must at least explain to him why——"
I checked myself, remembering.
"Of course I have explained to him already! That day we were feeding the chickens on the hillside! I told him the whole story of the letter I'd had from a young man who reminded me of him! Why, I can hear Dick Holiday's voice as he barked at me 'Threw the letter away? You can't have thrown it away!' ... To think that it was his letter! Anyhow, he heard then, without my knowing what I was explaining, what became of his address!"
Here I changed hands without stopping the churn in the way that I was taught by Mrs. Price.
I thought: "He knew everything, did he? I've a good mind to let him know that I know now as well!"
Then I thought again: "I would, if there weren't any Muriel in the case. Muriel stops it all..."
And then desperately I thought, still churning busily: "Why does everything happen to me when it's either too soon—or too late? I fell in love with Harry, but by the time he proposed to me it was too late. Dick wrote to ask me to marry him, but it was too soon. I hadn't seen what he was like now. Ah, if I'd known! If I could have foreseen! Wouldn't I have written off by return of post to tell him he might come and see me!"