"Yes, I see, Fritz. Now let's go to the house. Just lean on me." Phemie would have to go for the doctor, Agatha decided. She herself would not dare to leave.
"If you don't believe me," exclaimed Miss Finch, a sense of injury at last making itself manifest in her voice, "you can read the letters for yourself."
Agatha snatched the extended missive, thankful for anything that would throw light on Miss Finch's singular hallucination. Her stubborn incredulity received its first shock when she saw Miss Finch's name written across the yellow envelope in an unmistakably masculine hand. The contents of the letter completed her undoing.
"Miss Zaida Finch:
"Dear Friend—I have always believed the truth of those words of Scripture that it is not good for man to be alone. (Gen. 2:18.) Three dear companions have I taken to myself only to yield them to the cold and silent tomb. Have you ever thought of changing your state? You are so much in my thoughts that it seems a leading to show that it is you who should fill the place of my three lost companions, till you, too, shall be called from battle to reward.
"I hope you will make this matter a subject of prayer, and will see your way clear to accept me as your husband. Write me how you feel about it. I enclose stamp.
"Yours truly,
"Hiram L. Wiggins."
Agatha read the unusual document breathlessly, too relieved by the discovery that Miss Finch's mind was not seriously affected to appreciate to the full the unique literary quality of the composition. Deacon Wiggins actually was proffering Miss Finch his hand and so much of his heart as had not been consigned to the tomb along with the three deceased ladies who had borne his name. Agatha's impressions of the deacon were vaguely hostile, yet she realized that from Miss Finch's standpoint, the occasion called for congratulations. Agatha was not unaware of the little spinster's attitude of wistful anticipation where matrimony was concerned. And though it was difficult to think of Deacon Wiggins as the realization of a romantic dream, she warned herself that she must not be a kill-joy.
"I'm sure, Fritz," Agatha said, with no trace of her usual mischief, "that the deacon will be very fortunate if you decide—" She checked herself, for Miss Finch was extending a second letter.
"For the love of Mike," Agatha gasped, borrowing from Howard's vocabulary as her own seemed inadequate. "You don't mean there's another?"
"Yes, there are two, Agatha," said Miss Finch, and under the circumstances her flitting expression of complacency was quite excusable.
The dreadful suspicion flashing through Agatha's mind, that the guileless Miss Finch had been made the butt of a peculiarly obnoxious practical joke, vanished as she read Jim Doolittle's letter. It was too characteristic for her to doubt its authorship.