"Letters to all my good fairies," she laughed when I went for her; "and you mustn't look at the addresses!" She suggested that we walk to the village as she liked to post her letters herself. We went through the woods where I had seen her the day before.
"Constance and I were here this morning," she said when we reached the big boulder. "Let me see; I think I'll try a little trick to test the hand of fate. Give me those letters, please. If this falls with the address up, I'll mail it," and she chose one and handed me the others; "if the flap side turns up, I'll destroy it."
She sent it spinning into the air. A branch caught and held it an instant, then it fell, turning over and over, and lay straight on edge against a weed.
"No decision!" I cried. "It's an exact perpendicular."
She knelt beside it, pondering. "I think it leans just a trifle to the address side," she announced. "Therefore you may return it to your pocket and it goes into the post-office."
"These letters would probably answer a lot of questions for me if I dared run away with them," I suggested.
"The thought does you no credit, sir. You promised not to meddle, but just to let things take their course, and I must say that you are constantly improving. At times you grow suspicious—yes, you know you do—but, take it all in all, you do very well."
At the post-office she dropped all the letters but one into the chute. "It really did fall a little to the address side?" she questioned.
I gave my judgment that the letter stood straight on edge, inclining neither way.
"If my life hung in the balance, I should certainly not act where fate had been so timid."