"Reckon I do tumble to it, but what can we do?"
"You shouldn't have left her alone all that time from breakfast till dinner—if you'd gone after her at the start you could have brought her back. You should ought to have kicked Sir Harry out of Donkey Street before the start. I'd have done it surely. Reckon I love Ellen more'n you."
"Reckon you do, Jo. I tell you, I ought never to have married her—since it was you I cared for all along."
"Hold your tongue, Arthur. I'm ashamed of you to choose this time to say such an immoral thing."
"It ain't immoral—it's the truth."
"Well, it shouldn't ought to be the truth. When you married Ellen you'd no business to go on caring for me. I guess all this is a judgment on you, caring for a woman when you'd married her sister."
"You ain't yourself, Jo," said Arthur sadly, "and there's no sense arguing with you. I'll go away till you've got over it. Maybe I'll have some news for you to-morrow morning."
§27
To-morrow morning he had a letter from Ellen herself. He brought it at once to a strangely drooping and weary-eyed Joanna, and read it again over her shoulder.
"DEAR ARTHUR," it ran—