"The plan?" suggested Mrs. Davidson.
"The plan!" said Mary.
"I must be going before long," said Karen Jensen, having finished her saucer of berries, and caring little for philosophizing. "I've got to milk seven cows yet."
"I will come often, if I may, Mrs. Gage, now that I am again located in this valley," said her companion, rising also.
"Oh, won't you, please!" said Mary Gage. "And—won't you do me a little favor now? I have a letter—I was just going up to the corner to put it in the box. If you're going that way, will you drop it in for me?"
Karen Jensen hesitated, looking across at the shortcut across the fields, but Mrs. Davidson, not being well organized for barbed wire entanglements, offered for the errand, which would take her around by the road.
"Surely, I shall be most happy," said she. "I will walk around by the box and drop your letter very gladly. No, no, don't mind coming. It's nothing—I always go home that way."
But Sarah Davidson after all was the school teacher when she had passed beyond the gate in the willow lane. She felt that in her were represented all the privileges of what priesthood might be claimed in this valley. She felt that her judgment was large enough to be infallible, since she so long had been arbiter here in all mooted matters. It was, therefore, surely her right to have intelligence as to the plans, the emotions, the mental process of all these people, including all newcomers. Were they not indeed in her charge?
Her right? Indeed, was it not her duty to know what there was in this letter from the woman whom she herself had brought out here not so long ago? It caused her vast perturbation, for she had a conscience which dated back to ages of Scottish blood, but she was not one to deviate from her duty once she had established it! This letter—to Major Allen Barnes, in yonder city—what was in it?
It was a letter going to that outer world, from the very person whom she, Sarah Davidson, had brought into this sagebrush world and had set down among these neighbors. Just now she had confessed herself to be happy here. Why? Could it be a violation of confidence—an eavesdropping—opening this letter? Not in the least! It was only oppor-r-r-tunity! As to that, who did not know that for years every letter to a soldier was opened and censored? Obviously it was her duty as social censor of Two Forks also to open and read this letter.