“Your hand has matured somewhat since this valentine was written,” he remarked quietly; “but some of these letters I should know anywhere. No one could deceive me.”
“I did not suppose you had kept that foolish thing,” Nelly said, with a pitiful little quiver in her voice, as if she were just on the point of bursting into tears. “I am so ashamed!”
Dr. Joe looked at her a moment, as she stood there in the waning light,—a lovely, graceful girl from whom any man might be proud to win even a passing interest. So this was the woman, the thought of whom he had carried in his heart for years! If he had ever done any good thing, he was paid for it in the satisfaction of that hour.
“Are you sorry,” he asked slowly, “that you have helped one man to be his best self? Those words of yours were to me like the voice of my inmost soul. Since then this paper has never left me, nor have I ever ceased to strive to be worthy of the esteem of my unknown ‘valentine.’ If ever I have been generous instead of selfish, brave instead of cowardly, strong instead of weak, it has been because I have remembered the words written here, and meant to live in their spirit. Are you sorry for that? or do you grudge me the dear pleasure of thanking you?”
“No, I’m not sorry, nor do I grudge you any thing; but it was a girl’s freak, and I am not worthy of so much praise and honor.”
“It was a good girl’s good intention,” he said almost solemnly. “Let us be thankful that it succeeded.”
Nelly went back to the bedside of the old woman with a fluttering heart. How strange it seemed to think this sick woman was old enough to have outlived all anxieties except those about her pains and her supper! Had not she been young once? and had no one ever looked at her as Dr. Joe looked?
The next morning he came again. His medicine, a night’s sleep, Nelly’s care,—something seemed to have given the poor old patient a fresh lease of life. There was no need that Nelly should stay with her any more; but she went to see her daily, and it was curious how often Dr. Joe’s visits happened at the same time.
One night the doctor had left his horse at home, and he and Nelly walked away together. They talked about the lingering sunset and the soft south wind and even the old woman; for Nelly, woman-like, was struggling desperately to keep Dr. Joe from saying what she desperately wanted to hear. But, at last, it came,—a half-blunt, half-awkward speech, yet with Dr. Joe’s honest heart in it,—
“I’ve lived all these years just to earn your esteem, and now I find I don’t care a thing about that unless I can also win your love.”