“Am sending Phoebe to Blakeville next Monday to make her home with you and Harvey. Letter to-day explains all. Have Harvey meet her in Chicago Tuesday, four p.m., Lake Shore.”
He scratched his chin reflectively.
“I guess it don’t call for an answer, after all,” he said as much to himself as to the operator.
Nellie’s letter came the next afternoon, addressed to Harvey. In a state of great excitement he broke the seal and read the poignant missive with eyes that were glazed with wonder and—something even more potent.
She began by saying that she supposed he was happily married, and wished him all the luck in the world. Then she came abruptly to the point, as she always did:—“I am in such poor health that the doctors say I shall have to go to Arizona at once. I am good for about six months longer at the outside, they say. Not half that long if I stay in this climate. Maybe I’ll get well if I go out there. I’m not very keen about dying. I hate dead things; don’t you? Now about Phoebe. She’s been pining for you all these months. She doesn’t like Mr. Fairfax, and he’s not very strong for her. To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t want her about. She’s not his, and he hasn’t much use for anything 236 or anybody that doesn’t belong to him. I’ve got so that I can’t stand it, Harvey. The poor little kiddie is so miserably unhappy, and I’m not strong enough to get out and work for her as I used to. I would if I could. I think Fairfax is sick of the whole thing. He didn’t count on me going under as I have. He hasn’t been near me for a month, but he says it’s because he hates the sight of Phoebe. I wonder. It wasn’t that way a couple of years ago. But I’m different now. You wouldn’t know me, I’m that thin and skinny. I hate the word, but that’s what I am. The doctors have ordered me to a little place out in Arizona. I’ve got to do what they say, and what Fairfax says. It’s the jumping-off place. So I’m leaving in a day or two with Rachel. My husband says he can’t leave his business, but I’m not such a fool as he thinks. I won’t say anything more about him, except that he hasn’t the courage to watch me go down by inches.
“I can’t leave Phoebe with him and I don’t think it best to have her with me. She ought to be spared all that. She’s so young, Harvey. She’d never forget. You love her, and she adores you. I’m giving her back to you. 237 Don’t—oh, please don’t, ever let her leave Blakeville! I wish I had never left it, much as I hate it. I remember your new wife as being a kind, simple-hearted woman. She will be good to my little girl, I know, because she is yours as well. If I could get my health back, I’d work my heart out trying to support her, but it’s out of the question. I have nothing to give her, Harvey, and I simply will not let Fairfax provide for her. Do you understand? Or are you as stupid and simple as you always were? And as tender-hearted?”
There was more, but Harvey’s eyes were so full of tears he could not read.
He was waiting in the Lake Shore station when the train pulled in on Tuesday. His legs were trembling like two reeds in the wind and his teeth chattered with the chill of a great excitement. Out of the blur that obscured his vision bounded a small figure, almost toppling him over as it clutched his not too stable legs and shrieked something that must have pleased him vastly, for he giggled and chortled like one gone daft with joy.
A soulless guard tapped him on the shoulder 238 and gruffly ordered him to “get off to one side with the kid,” he was blocking the exit—and flooding it, he added after a peep at Harvey’s streaming eyes.