"Oh, yes."
Mrs. West waited until Marjorie opened it, and felt in her pocket for her glasses. In the other time she had always read his letters. But Marjorie moved away with it, and only said afterward that there was no "news" in it.
It was not like the letters of the other time. He had learned to write as she had learned to talk. Her reply was as full of herself as it would have been to Morris. Hollis could never be a stranger again.
XXVIII.
THE LINNET.
"He who sends the storm steers the vessel."—Rev. T. Adams
August passed and September was almost through and not one word had been heard of the Linnet. Linnet lived through the days and through the nights, but she thought she would choke to death every night. Days before she had consented, her mother had gone to her and urged her with every argument at her command to lock up her house and come home until they heard. At first, she resented the very thought of it; but Annie Grey was busy in Middlefield, Marjorie was needed at home, and the hours of the days seemed never to pass away; at last, worn out with her anguish, she allowed Captain Rheid to lift her into his carriage and take her to her mother.
As the days went on Will's father neither ate nor slept; he drove into Portland every day, and returned at night more stern and more pale than he went away in the morning.
Linnet lay on her mother's bed and wept, and then slept from exhaustion, to awake with the cry, "Oh, why didn't I die in my sleep?"
One evening Mrs. Rheid appeared at the kitchen door; her cap and sunbonnet had fallen off, her gray hair was roughened over her forehead, her eyes were wild, her lips apart. Her husband had brought her, and sat outside in his wagon too stupefied to remember that he was leaving his old wife to stagger into the house alone.