"A bed! I haven't slept in a bed for two years."
"Well, it won't kill ye, not for one night, I reckon," she said.
He looked around the little room, at the dainty lace curtains tied with little bows of ribbon, at the pictures and lambrequins, and it filled his heart with a sudden stress of longing. It made him remember the pretty parlor in which Mary had received him four years before, and he opened her letter with a tremor in his hands. It was dated the Christmas day of the year of his visit; it was more than three years belated, but he read it as if it were written the day before, and it moved him quite as powerfully.
"MY DEAR FRIEND: The impulse to write to you has grown stronger day by day since you left. Your wonderful life and your words appealed to my imagination with such power that I have been unable to put them out of my mind. Without intending to do so you have filled me with a great desire to see the West which is able to make you forget your family and friends and calls you on long journeys. I have sung for you every Sunday as I promised to do. Your friend Jack called to see me last night and we had a long talk about you. He is to write you also and gave me your probable address. You said you were not a good writer but I wish you would let me know where you are and what you are doing, for I feel a deep interest in you, although I can not make myself believe that you are not the Harold Excell I saw in Rock River. In reality you are not he, any more than I am the little prig who sang those songs to save your soul! However, I was not so bad as I seemed even then, for I wanted you to admire my voice.
"I hope this Christmas day finds you in a warm and sheltered place. It would be a great comfort to me if I could know you were not cold and hungry. Jack brought me a beautiful present—a set of George Eliot. I ought not to have accepted it but he seemed so sure it would please me I had not the heart to refuse. I would send something to you only I can't feel sure of reaching you, and neither does Jack.
"It may be of interest to you to know that Mr. King the pastor, in whose church I sang, has resigned his pastorate to go abroad for a year. His successor is a man with a family—I don't see how he will manage to live on the salary. Mr. King had independent means and was a bachelor."
Right there the youth stopped. Something told him that he had reached the heart of the woman's message. King had resigned to go abroad. Why? The tone of the letter was studiedly cold. Why? There were a few more lines to say that Jack was coming in to eat Christmas dinner with her and that she would sing If I Were a Voice. He was not super-subtle and yet something in this letter made his throat fill and his head a little dizzy. If it did not mean that she had broken with King, then truth could not be conveyed in lines of black ink.
He tore open Jack's letter. It was short and to the point.
"DEAR HARRY: If you can get away come back to Marmion and see Mary again. She wants to see you bad. I don't know what has happened but I think she has given King his walking papers—and all on account of you. I know it. It can't be anybody else. She talked of you the entire evening. O man! but she was beautiful. She sang for me but her mind was away in the mountains. I could see that. It was her interest in you made her so nice to me. Now that's the God's truth. Come back and get her.