"Watts say anything about whether he was still mending boats?" she asked in the off-hand manner people adopt for vital things.
"Why I guess he is, 'cause he made a speech last week—oh there was a whole lot of men—and he just sowed seeds of discontentment."
"Such a busy little sower!" murmured Aunt Kate lovingly.
She knew that he was there, or at least had been there the week before, for just as she was leaving her uncle's she had received a note from him. They had not been writing to each other since the brief letter she had sent him the day after receiving the announcement of her brother's engagement. This note had been written to tell her no special thing; simply because, he said, after trying his best for a number of weeks, he was not longer able to keep from writing. He wrote because he couldn't help it. He had determined to love her too well to urge her to do what, knowing it all, she evidently felt could not hold happiness for her. But the utter desolation of life without her had crumbled the foundation of that determination.
In the note he said that his boat-mending days were about over. They would not have lasted that long only he had had no heart for other things.
But the letter gave Katie heart for other things! Its unmistakable wretchedness made her superbly radiant.
"Why, Worthie," she exclaimed, "just see here! Here's the very place where we landed that other time."
"Oh yes, Aunt Kate—it's still here."
She smiled; he could not have done better had he been trying.
"Now I wonder if I could make that landing again. I was proud of the way
I did that before. I don't suppose I could do it again."