Yours truly,
Ambrose Thompson, Esq.
It was an odd, stiff letter, and yet that afternoon when Emily had received it she laughed and placed it inside the folds of her primrose dress; although a moment afterward she sighed with the thought of the lonely hour before sunset.
CHAPTER XI
FOLLOWING HIS ADVICE
No further reference was made to the difference between the two friends, but Ambrose had reason to believe a few days later that Miss Dunham was following his advice; for coming out in his yard before breakfast, after a restless night, he was just in time to spy Mrs. Barrows climbing into the gig with Doctor Webb, carrying a basket on her arm and wearing so glorified an expression that it could come of nothing but the opportunity of ministering to the sick. For the care of the sick gave to Susan the same glow of pleasure that the act of creation gives to the artist or the command of his army gives the born general. Once stationed by the bedside of a patient, was she not the main source from which news of the illness must flow as well as the basin into which all inquiries must be poured? Certainly Ambrose had so considered her.
Moreover, that afternoon his suspicion was justified by Miner's growling at him over the opening of a new hogshead of molasses: "Miss Dunham's powerful poorly," and then going on furiously with his work as though he had never spoken.
And Ambrose did not dare ask questions nor prolong the subject of their conversation, though wistful to hear that Miner as well as Emily approved his plan. However, there was little doubt of its success, for the turning of the tide in favour of the Yankee schoolmistress soon could be seen, heard, and felt. Rivers of soup were made to flow toward the once anathematized cabin, and mountains of sponge cake and jelly were dumped at its door.