Marion had never received a letter in her life, so she and Elfie walked past the hall-table where Mrs. Abbott was opening the bag without so much as a glance at it, but they had not reached the top of the stairs before Mr. Eaton called out:
“Letters for you, Marion.”
“Letters for me? O, no, they can’t be mine, they must be for some of the other girls.”
“But how very, very imbecile their correspondents must be to direct them to Miss Marion Stubbs!”—holding up two square envelopes, one white, the other robin’s-egg blue. “Don’t you think you’ll have to open them so as to see which of the girls they are really meant for? or shall I lay them away till vacation is over, and then put them up at auction?”
“He is teasing you, Marion,” said Mrs. Abbott, glancing up from the letter she was reading. “They are really for you.”
Such a pleasure actually to have letters of her own! Marion had often envied the girls when they clutched their letters from home and became absorbed in their contents, smiling, exclaiming, and sometimes almost crying, as their eyes devoured the home news. But poor Mrs. Stubbs, with her broken-down health and her never-ceasing work, had no time to write to her daughter, and even if she had it was so many years since she had written a letter that she would hardly know how to do it. As for her father and the little boys, they would cheerfully have killed a bear or a rattlesnake or even encountered a mad dog and conquered him, for their absent girl’s sake, but such a stupendous, overwhelming task as writing a letter was not even to be considered, and the well-written, dutiful, fortnightly letters which Marion duly sent to the humble mountain home were regarded with awe and wonder, and read again and again by her proud and affectionate family.
But there were actually letters for her to-day, and the joy of receiving them was so great that Marion laid them face up on her table and gloated over them, not for some time attempting to make them reveal their contents. When she did break the seal of the blue-tinted envelope she read these astonishing lines:
“My Dear Marion: You are coming to spend a week with me and go back to school with me and Lily—I mean Lily and me—that is, if you want to. Mamma said our house was going to be too empty at Christmas, and I might invite some girls. So I chose you and Lily, and mamma has written to Mrs. Abbott about it, and I do hope she will let you come.
“Ever your affectionate friend,
“Katherine Stowe Ashley.”
That stately signature did not seem like Katie, but Marion knew perfectly well whose hand wrote the invitation which filled her heart with rapture, not for the pleasure of anticipating a visit, for she was not sure she really wanted to go, but it was delicious to feel that she was wanted, and that dear, warm-hearted, loving Katie had chosen her when she might have asked Edna or Bell or any of the girls who were used to better ways of living and better society than she had known.
Mrs. Abbott, coming into her room with Elfie, a few moments later, found her plunged in a happy reverie, with the second letter still unopened.