"Write the words I told you," insisted Sabine. "This is my letter, not yours."
Reluctantly the younger woman set down the sentence; then added the requisite and necessary "Good-by, from Sabine."
"Is there room for a few kisses?" asked the fiancée.
"One row."
Sabine seized the pen greedily and holding it between clenched fingers added a line of significant little lop-sided symbols. Then while her secretary prepared the letter for mailing, she wiped her forehead with a large blue handkerchief which she refolded and returned to the skirt-pocket that contained her rosary and her purse. She put on her little old yellow-black hat again and made ready to go.
"Now to the post-office," she said. "How glad Thomas Ned will be when he gets it!"
"I am sure he will," said Mary; and if there was any doubt in her tone, it was not perceived by her friend, who suddenly flung her arms about her in a gush of happy emotion.
"Dieu, que c'est beau, l'amour!" she exclaimed.
The sentiment was not a new one in the world; but it was still a new one, and very wonderful, to Sabine Bob: Sabine Bob who had never been pretty, even in youthful days, who had never had any nice clothes or gone to parties, but had just scrubbed and washed and swept, saved what she could, gone to church on Sundays, bought a new pair of shoes every other year.
Not that she had ever thought of pitying herself. She was too practical for that; and besides, there had always been plenty to be happy about. The music in church, for instance, which thrilled and dissolved and comforted her; and the pictures there, which she loved to gaze at, especially the one of Our Lady above the altar.