"I thought you wouldn't permit a dog to lie in your lap," said Marion.
"Do you remember that?" said Fleda with a smile. "Ah I have grown tender-hearted, Marion, since I have known what it was to want comfort myself. I have come to the conclusion that it is best to let everything have all the enjoyment it can in the circumstances. King crawled into my lap one day when I had not spirits enough to turn him out, and he has kept the place ever since.--Little King!"--In answer to which word of intelligence King looked in her face and wagged his tail, and then earnestly endeavoured to lick all her fingers. Which however was a piece of comfort she would not give him.
"Fleda," said Barby putting her head in, "I wish you'd just step out here and tell me which cheese you'd like to have cut."
"What a fool!" said Marion. "Let her cut them all if she likes."
"She is no fool," said Fleda. She thought Barby's punctiliousness however a little ill-timed, as she rose from her sofa and went into the kitchen.
"Well you do look as if you wa'n't good for nothing but to be taken care of!" said Barby. "I wouldn't have riz you up if it hadn't been just tea-time, and I knowed you couldn't stay quiet much longer;"--and with a look which explained her tactics she put into Fleda's hand a letter directed to her aunt.
"Philetus gave it to me," she said, without a glance at Fleda's face,--"he said it was give to him by a spry little shaver who wa'n't a mind to tell nothin' about himself."
"Thank you, Barby!" was Fleda's most grateful return; and summoning her aunt up-stairs she took her into her own room and locked the door before she gave her the letter which Barby's shrewdness and delicacy had taken such care should not reach its owner in a wrong way. Fleda watched her as her eye ran over the paper and caught it as it fell from her fingers.
"My Dear Wife,
"That villain Thorn has got a handle of me which he will not fail to use--you know it all I suppose, by this time--It is true that in an evil hour, long ago, when greatly pressed, I did what I thought I should surely undo in a few days--The time never came--I don't know why he has let it lie so long, but he has taken it up now, and he will push it to the extreme--There is but one thing left for me--I shall not see you again. The rascal would never let me rest, I know, in any spot that calls itself American ground.