"Why, I thought Hiram was in high favor—with you all," I said in surprise, remembering the occasion of the fainting-spell.
"He was, so long as Nevar was just a ordinary country girl," Mrs. Sullivan explained, wiping her eyes and glancing with a look of shame and reproach at Neva; "but do you reckon me and Tim's spending all that money on her education, and then let her turn in and marry anybody as plain as Hiram Ellis?"
"Plain! Well, I don't see as we're so fancy!" Neva said indignantly.
"Is she going to marry him this morning?" I asked, and I noted then the extreme fussiness of Neva's hair arrangement. It bore a truly leonine aspect. She had on her school uniform, and so, except for the number of class-pins, she had not sinned excessively in the way of dress. But the hair gave me some misgivings as to her intentions.
"Ain't no telling what she'll do," her mother said hopelessly. "She's bent on going to church where she can see him! We've done all we could to keep her at home, even to locking up her hats and Tim carrying off the curling-irons in his pocket so she couldn't curl her hair. But do you know what that young'un done? I'll be blessed if she didn't hunt up her pappy's old tool box and git out his old augur—and curled her hair on that. Did you ever hear of a girl so deep in love that she'd curl her hair on a het augur?"
"Oh, mamma," she begged piteously, "don't say 'pappy!' And don't say 'het!'"
So it happened that I walked alone through the "garden." Alone, yet I felt that I was in a beloved presence, for Richard's last letter was with me. I sat down at the edge of the lake which had dried up in the Stone Age, and drew the letter out from its resting-place to read it over again.
Richard's handwriting is heavy, black, and almost as free from flowing curves as the chirography of a literary man. "Sweetheart," the letter began, and the firm lines which formed the letters looked very much as if he meant it. It was signed "Richard, R. I.," in humorous acceptance of the title I had given him. But perhaps the dearest thing in connection with the letter was the faint aroma of "Habana" which hung over it. I held the sheets up close to my face and shielded them from any vandal winds that might slip up and covet that sweet odor; and I recalled the smile in his eyes when he made me the promise that he would always be smoking when he wrote to me—that the letters might be more realistic.
"Don't tell me any more that you are a full-grown woman," he said, as he made the promise. "You are a child—but adorable."
He knew that I would be lonely, the letter stated, but he had left orders with a book-dealer that a batch of new books be sent out to me each week, to help while away the time. Orders had also been left with the florist and confectioner—and I must at once report to him any negligence on the part of these worthies.