Dickory stood silent, his bosom heaving. Suddenly he turned sharply towards her. "Of course he has written," said he, "but how could his letter come to you? We know not where he has sailed, and besides, who could have told him you had already gone to your uncle? But the people at Bridgetown must know things. I believe that he has written there."
"Why do you believe that?" she asked eagerly, with one hand on his arm.
"I think it," said Dickory, his cheeks a little ruddier in their brownness, "because there is more known there than Master Newcombe chose to put into his letter. If he has not written, how should they know more?"
She now looked straight into his eyes, and as he returned the gaze he could see in her pupils his head and his straw hat, with the clear sky beyond.
"Dickory," she said, "if he wrote to anybody he also wrote to me, and that letter is still there."
"That is what I believe," said he, "and I have been believing it."
"Then why didn't you say so to me, you wretched boy?" cried Kate. "You ought to have known how that would have comforted me. If I could only think he has surely written, my heart would bound, no matter what his letter told; but to be utterly dropped, that I cannot bear."
"You have not been dropped," he exclaimed, "and you shall know it. Kate, I am going—"
"Nay, nay," she exclaimed, "you must not call me that!"
"But you call me Dickory," he said.