Still, the remittances always went; it had required some special scrimping to make the check the same as usual, and yet bring in Chautauqua; it had been delayed beyond its usual time by these new departures, and it was on this particular evening that she was getting it ready for the mail. For seven years, twice a year, she had regularly written her note:
Aunt Hannah:—I inclose in this letter a check for ——. I hope you are as well as usual. In haste,
M. J. Wilbur.
This, or a kindred sentence as brief and as much to the point. To-night her fingers had played with the pen instead of writing, and at last, with a curious smile hovering around her lip, she wrote the unaccustomed words, "Dear Aunt." It would have taken very little to have made the smile into a quiver; it seemed just then so strange that she should have no one to write that word "dear" to; that she should use it so rarely that it actually looked like a stranger to her. Then the writing went on thus:
"I hope I have not caused you discomfort by being somewhat later than usual with your check. Matters shaped themselves in such a way that I could not send it before. I hope it will be of a little help and comfort to you. I wish it were larger. Give my re—love to Uncle Reuben."
The "re" was the beginning of the word "regards," but she thought better of it and wrote "love." He was her father's brother, and the only relative she had. Then the pen paused again, and the writer gnawed at the painted holder, and mused, and looked sober first, then bright-faced, and finally she dashed down this line:
"Dear Aunt Hannah, I have found my father's Friend, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He is indeed mighty to save, as father used to say that he was. I have proved it, for he has saved me. I wish you and Uncle Reuben knew him.
"Yours truly, Marion."
I suppose Marion would have been very much surprised had she known what I know, that Aunt Hannah and Uncle Reuben shed tears over that letter, and put it in the family Bible. And, someway, they felt more thankful for the check than they had ever done before.
Marion did not know this, but she knew that her own heart felt lighter than usual as she hurried about her room. The girls came before she was fairly through with her preparations—a bright trio, with enough of beauty and grace and elegance about them to fairly make her room glow.