When All the Woods Are Green: A Novel

by S. Weir Mitchell

“I should.”

“How many bears go to a wooing?”

“Let me alone, Aunt. I had better be let alone.”

Then Aunt Anne, who was feebler than ever, said to herself, “Love is the only fruit which ripens in the spring.” But meanwhile Carington was away in Cuba, as we have said, and the spring came and went without results.

He found in his rooms in Boston, on his return, a letter from Miss Anne Lyndsay. He was depressed in spirits; the town was empty of all he knew, and more than ever he felt the want of a home. When last he saw Miss Rose, she was still, as always, pleasant, gay, and friendly. He had never yet seen fully the emotional side of a nature resolute by construction, and perfectly mistress of all the protective ways of the world of woman. Now and then the dim past of their life on the river seemed to him as if it had never been. More and more time, and the world appeared to be widening the distance between them, and yet once she had looked to be so near.

He sat a minute or two with Anne’s letter in his hand. The maiden lady,—“Mistress Anne” he liked to call her, after the Southern fashion his youth remembered,—Mistress Anne had, as the months went by, taken him quietly into the wide circle of her friendships. Her letters, however, were rare enough. She wrote many, but not often to Carington, although from Cuba he had written frequently.

He put aside all the other notes and, lighting a pipe, sat down with Anne’s letter, honestly glad of the kindly relation it suggested.

Dear Mr. Carington: I have had a number of letters from you of late, and this is all I have been able to give in return. I have now to limit myself even as to this indulgence.

You won’t want to hear about the new books, and you will have, I presume, some quite absurd desire to know about my good people. A man would say, “Everybody quite well, thank you”; but, being a woman, I know better the masculine wants: only women write satisfactory letters.

My good brother is well, and shamefully busy at the game of the law. Mrs. Lyndsay is just now in bed. Dr. North comes daily; but Margaret’s maladies, which I must say are rare, are obstinate when they arrive. She has to read a report next week at a society for the prevention of something to something. If she lets that day go by in bed, I shall be alarmed. A dose of duty will cure her at any time. She requires large doses of pity when ill, and as to that I am grimly homeopathic.