CHAPTER IX
CORRESPONDENCE
Before Miss Barry's train had reached Chicago, Linda had received a telegram conveying sympathy from Mrs. Porter. A pile of notes and letters lay now unopened on her desk. Her sister had read the telegram at the time of its arrival, and left it on the table beside Linda's bed, where one day she read it; but the girl refused the least pressure on her wound from even the most friendly and delicate fingers. This very afternoon, when, tingling with excitement and antagonism, she swept from the room, she passed the maid who was at the door, just bringing in the mail. Somewhat hesitatingly the girl offered the letters to her young mistress. She and all the other servants stood in awe of the suffering that had so altered the jolly, careless, imperious young woman.
Linda, her heart beating tumultuously with its indignation, accepted the package automatically, and went on upstairs to her room.
She raised her hand to her throat in the effort to stop its choking, and threw down the letters. The handwriting on the top one was familiar and full of happy association. Here was one person who loved her, and understood her, and whose patience had never failed.
With the picture vividly before her of the faces of her scandalized sister and aunt, she caught up this letter and held it to her breast, her large gaze fixed straight ahead. The kindly expression, the humorous smile, the loving eyes of her teacher as they had rested on her hundreds of times, strove with the other picture. She felt she could bear to have Mrs. Porter talk to her. She moved to the door and locked it, conscious suddenly that she was trembling; then she sank into a chair and opened the letter.
My dear Linda (it began),—
I have waited a full week to write to you because I felt that at first you wouldn't care to read a letter even from me. Do you notice that "even"? Yes, I feel sure you love me as I do you, sincerely, and it gives me courage to talk to you just as if you were lying beside me on these sun-warmed rocks, with the cool wind trying in spurts to snatch off the duck hat that is shading my eyes. It can't succeed, for the hat is tied on with the white veil you gave me. There is a little scent of orris in it still, marking it as yours, and giving me the pleasant feeling of one of your "bear's hugs."
I am sorry to be a thousand miles off from my little girl's troubles, and so all this week I have been trying to know that the opposite of this sense of separation is the truth; that all that I love in you is mine still, and that the greater part of what I could do for you if I were there it is my privilege to do here. The personal touch, the interchange of loving looks, is dear to our human sense, but sometimes even these get in the way of the loftier, broader mission which God's children may perform for one another.
I have been thinking much about your father, a man whose keen sense of honor, and large charity, will be discerned more and more clearly when the present confusion is straightened out.