"Dear Mrs. Grey," Rob read. "I hope you are all enjoying the health at present which we are. He is not better, but remains much the same. I am about as usual. I received your letter which I now take my pen in hand to answer and would say that I do not know of any objections to renting our farm but the contrary because the taxes runs up pretty fast and when it is not worked it goes all to pieces. The hundred dollars which you mention as the price the man you wrote about will pay is more than we could get from any one round there but there is not no reason why you ought to tell him this if he wants to pay that much and we don't mind what use it gets so as we get the money regular. So if he wants it we will let him take it and be a relief off our minds more my mind than his because I got to take the care now he is laid up. What you say about Maimie sounds all right to me. I don't feel as if I could stand in her way if you think musics what she can do best of course she will have her own living to earn some-way. In the matter of education I do not feel as if I had enough myself to speak about it I can make out to spell right I guess because there is always a dictionary and nobody has no need to spell bad but for the rest I guess I had better leave it to you to do what you think is best about Maimie. I hope she knows that she is lucky to have such friends raised up to her when her father's stricken down and tell her to mind what you tell her and study hard. I guess she won't ever be our child again when she has got through studying. But it don't matter if she gets through her life better than we have. Her father would like to be remembered to you if he was just himself, but to-day is one of his times when he is sort of queer in his head. My love to Maimie, and my regards to all the family particularly Roberta.
"Yours respectfully. Rebecca Ann Flinders.
"P. S. Excuse mistakes and my poor writing my hand is sort of cramped from not writing much and doing housework."
"Oh, dear," sighed Rob, wiping away the tears of mingled amusement and pity which had risen in eyes quick to respond to both. "Isn't it funny? Spelled correctly, as she says, but guiltless of punctuation! And isn't it pathetic?"
"Very, when she says Polly will never be their child again—and I'm afraid it is true," said Mrs. Grey.
"But for all that she desires the child's best good; there spoke the mother, revealed in spite of ignorance, as eloquently as mother-love can be expressed," said Cousin Peace.
"This is certainly for Polly's best good," said Wythie. "I wish one were less often half sorry for succeeding in this world! However, we can now write Mr. Armstrong; Polly can be regularly installed as the next heir to his fund, and he can hire the farm, and Hester can begin her home for cripples without much longer delay."
"It seems to me we are getting into charities without any effort on our part," observed Rob. "We live our uneventful, commonplace lives, and a sort of warm gulf stream of the milk of human kindness is at once penetrating us and bearing us away upon its bosom."
"Dear me, Rob, what oratory!" laughed her mother.
"Literary style, gained from composing my stories and telling them to the children," explained Rob.