“No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all the year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.”
“I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion involved in this complaint.
“Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table—‘Oh, by the way, Aunt Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel—’ only this and nothing more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if he doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked:
“Do you really want me to write to you?”
“You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. “Yes, you shall write me—and long letters too, mind—as often as you like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours before he gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back from the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine. Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.”
Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this time with a light heart and a gay demeanor. A month’s absence had served so to remodel his views of the Chronicle, that he already felt himself to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been constantly spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that journal, and found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to use it in thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new enthusiasm and power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only that he saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick of success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive answers equally long and nice from her, and—this gave him an especial sense of delight—it was all to be a secret between them.
The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him some cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were pleasant preludes to a little brotherly conversation.
“I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the Chronicle as soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I am going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year—don’t whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass grow under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the Convention. But the Chronicle can do a good deal in the election, and I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing my business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for me, big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my writing. You won’t forget!”
No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily, he would not forget.