"You must wait," said our sympathizing friend.
Yes, we must wait. Yet "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
"Have you been to see the woman who sent for you to-day?"
"No! It is nobody that I know. Some mistake."
"But she sent her name by the black woman, when she came the second time."
"I know it, but it is no one that I know. The name is utterly unknown to me. It is a French name. Some mistake." There was a mistake.
What prompted me to look again at the name? I knew it as well as I should if I looked at that paper a hundred times. Yet I was prompted to look at it once more. The desire was irresistible. Who has ever felt a longing after something unseen, unknown, unheard, undefined, something that he feels as though he must have or die, yet knows not how to obtain, may realize the intensity of my desire to see that paper once more. Where is it? This pocket, and that is searched, turned wrong side out, and turned back again; the table, floor, books, papers, hunted over, but nowhere can it be found. What has spirited it away? It could not blow out of the window, for there is no air stirring.
"It must," said the lady, "have gone down on the tea-tray—I will call Bridget."
A woman is worth a dozen men for thought, and this time she thought truly. It had gone down that way, and gone into the slop-bucket, and into the street.