"Well, I'm sure," said Val, eager to defend herself, "cousin Ethan says that to the American, to the unjaded mind the wide world over, it is the 'life' in any picture or description that interests and fixes itself in the memory. A vast amount is said and written about St. Mark's in Venice. But in how many minds does it stand a beautiful and stately background for flights of pigeons to wheel and circle against, or to settle down before, on friendly terms with the populace? Not the glories of architecture, but the brief and gentle life of doves, makes the picture vital in the mind."
"Ah, and when did Ethan say all that?"
"When—while you were ill I had a letter from him."
"Oh, indeed!" She turned with an indescribable look and settled down among the pillows.
"Shall I get the letter and read it to you?" said Val, to her own surprise and most unwillingly, but acting under a sense of strong coercion.
"As you please," said the wily old woman. "Have a look for Bunsen, too."
Val absented herself long enough, looking for Bunsen, to adapt Ethan's letter for a grandmother's ears. It had been no love-letter even in its original form, but it unconsciously paved the way for one and more to follow. Val wrote to her cousin that night:
"I have usually read your letters to the family, and think it would be better to go on doing so. It's not that my grandmother tries to make me. When I offer to, she says, 'As you please, my dear,' but I have a horrid, uncomfortable feeling if I don't. She seems to be looking through me into the back of my spine, to see why I want to keep the letter to myself. It's funny, but when I don't show it to her she makes me think she has divined not only all there was in it that I didn't want to show her, but a great deal more. It's that I resent most. So, if you want to say something you don't want her to see (about the money, you know, and things like that), just put a tiny check opposite the stamp-corner, and I'll know there's an enclosure meant only for me."
It was these "enclosures" that worked the mischief. They were a standing invitation to say things too intimate for other eyes. Brief and discreet at first, and dealing with figures, they expanded as time went on, till they had to be written finely on foreign note, that the discrepancy between the letter's bulk when brought to the front door, and the letter as it appeared in the family circle up-stairs, should not challenge attention. Mrs. Gano's confinement to her room made the matter easy. Only the blind and unobservant Emmie ever saw the letter when it came. If it bore the significant check, it was opened alone; if not, the seal was ostentatiously broken under the vigilant eye. It was sure to be an exciting hour. Great preparations preceded: a propping up of pillows, and mending of the fire, if it were winter, that the reading and inevitable discussion might be uninterrupted; a proper arrangement of light and general careful "setting of the scene." Emmie, with soft eyes shining, sitting demurely by in the little green chair that had been hers—her father's, too, when a child—and Val close to the bedside, reading with beating heart and a careful emphasis (for she was scolded else) the accounts of Ethan's varied life—accounts punctuated by comment, laughter, and sometimes by scathing disapproval.