Chip’s life had been a strange, complex series of moods of peculiar effect, and her conduct must be judged accordingly.
First, the dense ignorance of years at Tim’s Place, with its saving grace of disgust at such surroundings and such a life. Then a few months with people so different and so kind that it seemed an entrance into heaven, to be followed by weeks of a growing realization that she was a nobody, and an outcast unfit for Greenvale.
And then came the climax of all this: the bitter sneers of Hannah, Ray’s cool neglect, the consciousness that she was only a dependent pauper, and then her flight into the world and away from all that stung her like so many whips.
But a revulsion of feeling was coming. Chip, no longer a simple child of the wilderness, was realizing her own needs and her own nature. Something broader and more satisfying than school life and the companionship of Aunt Abby was needed; yet how to find it never occurred to her.
With September came Aunt Abby’s annual visit to Peaceful Valley. A few days before their departure, Chip received a letter which was so unexpected and so vital to her feelings that it must be quoted.
It was dated at the little village of Grindstone, directed to Vera McGuire, care of Judson Walker, by whom it was forwarded to Christmas Cove.
“My dear Chip,” it began.
“I feel that you will not care to hear from me, and yet I must write. I know I am more to blame than any one for the way you left Greenvale, and that you must consider me a foolish boy, without much courage, which I have been, and I realize it only too well now, when it is too late. But I am more of a man to-day, I hope, and sometime I shall come and try to obtain your forgiveness for being so blind. No one ever has been, and I know no one ever will be, what you are to me. As Old Cy says, ‘Blessings brighten as they vanish,’ and now, after this long separation, one word and one smile from dear little Chip would seem priceless to me, and I shall come and try to win it before many months.
“I am here with Uncle Martin’s old guide, Levi. We are going into the woods to-morrow to gather gum and trap until spring. I have hired two other men to help, and hope to do well and make some money. I think you will be glad to know that Old Cy was here this summer and was well. He does not know that you have been found, and is still hunting for you. Levi told me that the people here are much interested in you, that they have fixed up the yard where your mother is buried, and he put up a small stone.
“I wish I could hear from you, but there is no chance now. Please try to forgive a foolish boy for being stupid, and think of me as you did during those happy days by the lake.