I heard you words what you sent. They was good words. It made my heart glad that words Black Fox which he brought. I am wait all time for you. No one else is in my thoughts. This letter I am written me myself all lone—no one is help me. No one knows that I put it in puss-tofis. I send mogasuns.
Nistina.
With this letter all stamped and directed, and the packages of moccasins, she hurried with beating heart to the store in which the post-office occupied a corner. There she hovered like a mother partridge about its nest, coming and going, till a favorable moment offered. She knew just what to do. She had rehearsed it all in her mind a hundred times, and when she had slipped the letter into the slit she laid the package on the window, and flew away to watch and to wait for a word from the far-away land.
Weeks passed, and her heart grew sad and heavy. She dared not ask for a letter, but lingered at the store till the clerks grew jocose and at last familiar, and her heart was bitter toward all white men.
In her extremity she went to Macosa, who was now a matronly wife, mother of a sturdy son, and asked her to go to the post-office and inquire for a letter.
“A letter!” exclaimed she. “Who is going to write you a letter?”
After much persuasion she consented to go, but returned empty handed. She had only half regarded Nistina’s request, but as the tears came to her friend’s eyes, she believed, and all of the goodness of her heart arose, and she said:
“Don’t cry. I will go every day and ask, if you wish me to.”
It is hard to wait for a letter when the letter is the one thing in life worth waiting for, and Nistina was very silent and very sad all the time, and her mistress wondered at this; but her questions brought no reply from the girl, who kept at her writing diligently, steadily refusing to confuse her mind with other things. She did not seem to wish to talk—only to write at every spare moment, and each day her writing grew in beauty of line till it was almost as beautiful as the printed copy.