"She also what?" asked John, mantling.
"Mr. March, do you suppose either of these is bad news?"
"No, ma'am, one's probably from Suez to say the black girl's coming, and the other's from her husband; but if it were not good news, he was to send it to me."
She took the telegrams in and was soon with him again. "Oh, Mr. March, they're just as you said! Mrs. Ravenel says tell you she's better—which is true—and to thank you once more, but to say that she can't any longer—" the little musician poured upon him her most loving beams—"let you make the sacrifice you're——"
John solemnly smiled. "Why, she hasn't been letting me. She never asked me to stay and she needn't ask me to go. I gave my word to him, and I shall keep it—to myself." His manner grew more playful. "That's what you'd do, wouldn't you, if you were a man?"
But at that moment his hearer was not fancying herself a man; she was only wishing she were a younger woman. A gleam of the wish may have got into her look as she gave him her hand at parting, for somehow he began to have a sort of honey-sickness against femmine interests and plainly felt his land company's business crowding upon his conscience.
LXIV.
JUDICIOUS JOHANNA
One thing that gives play for sentiment concerning a three hours' belated railway train is the unapologetic majesty with which at last it rolls into a terminal station.