“Yes, a heap,” was the answer, and the great, blue eyes looked wistfully at Ben, as if anxious that he should clear up the mystery.
“You might write,” suggested Mrs. Burt; but Marian shook her head, saying, “I wrote once, and you know my success.”
“You certainly wouldn’t go back,” continued Mrs. Burt; and Marian answered indignantly, “Never! I am sure he hates me now, and I shall not trouble him again. Perhaps he thinks me mean because I read the letter intended for him, and so found it all out. But I thought it was mine until I read a ways, and then I could not stop. My eyes wouldn’t leave the paper. Was it wrong in me, do you think?”
“It is what anybody would have done,” answered Mrs. Burt, and, changing the subject entirely, Marian rejoined, “Oh, I do wish I knew about this Isabel.”
For a time Ben sat thinking; then striking his hands together, he exclaimed, “I’ve got it, and it’s jest the thing, too. I don’t want no better fun than that. I’ve lost my place to Ware, and though I might get another, I’ve a notion to turn peddler. I allus thought I should like travellin’ and seein’ the world. I’ll buy up a lot of jimcracks and take a bee line for Redstun Hall, and learn just how the matter stands. I can put on a little more of the Down East Yankee, if you think I hain’t got enough, and I’ll pull the wool over their eyes. What do you say, wee one?”
“Oh, I wish you would,” said Marian, adding in the same breath, “what will you do, if you find him the husband of Isabel?”
“Do!” he repeated. “String ’em both up by the neck on one string. What do you ’spect I’d do? Honest, though,” he continued, as he saw her look of alarm; “if she is his wife, which ain’t at all likely, ’tis because he s’posed you’re dead, but he knows better now, and I shall tell the neighbors that you’re alive and breathin’, and they can do with him what they choose—and if they ain’t married, nor ain’t nothin’, I’ll just do what you say.”
“Come back, and don’t tell Frederic you ever saw or heard of me,” said Marian. “I shall not live a great while, and even if I do, I’d rather not trouble him. It would only make him hate me worse, and that I couldn’t bear. He knows now where I am, and if he ever wants me, he will come. Don’t tell him, nor any one, a word of me, Ben, but do go, for I long to hear from home.”
To Mrs. Burt this project seemed a wild and foolish one, but she rarely opposed her son, and when she saw that he was determined, she said nothing, but helped him all she could.
“You’ll be wantin’ to send some jimcrack to that, blind gal, I guess,” he said to Marian one day, and she replied, “I wish I could, but I havn’t anything, and besides you mustn’t tell her of me.”