“‘You’re not starting cholera?’ he suggested suspiciously.
“‘No, I tell you; I’m perfectly well.’
“‘Glad of that,’ he said, but I told myself peevishly that his gladness was based entirely on considerations of his own convenience.
“Ten days passed; a fortnight; three weeks; I was in despair. Then one morning, as I came out of our door with a basket in my hand to pick up a couple of eggs for breakfast, I saw a large magenta patch down below, on the hilly pathway which led from our house to the village. This, I knew, must be the old negro woman who brought our rare letters. I watched her; the morning was slightly misty, for it was very early, not long after sunrise, and I saw her black face emerge from the plum-coloured mashlak she wore. I started off to meet her. She came toiling up the hill, panting and blowing, for she was enormously fat, but an indestructibly good-humoured grin parted her lips over her gleaming teeth, and suddenly I fancied a grotesque resemblance to Mrs. Pennistan, and I laughed aloud as though a good omen had come to speed me.
“I came up to her. Her black skin was glistening with moisture, and her vast body rocked and swayed about inside her gaudy magenta wrapper; I suspected it of being her only covering. Still, I almost loved her as with a chatter of Turkish she produced a great black arm and hand out of the folds of her mashlak—a fat black hand so ludicrously like Mrs. Pennistan’s fat white one, holding a little packet which she tendered to me.
“I summoned my Turkish to thank her; this called forth a deluge of conversation on her part, with much shining of teeth and clattering of bangles, but I shook my head regretfully, and she, heaving her huge shoulders and displaying her palms in equivalent regret, turned herself round and started on the easier downward road to Ayasalouk. Could Ruth but have seen this voluminous magenta emissary! for the packet I held was indeed from Ruth and bore the Weald postmark.
“I sat down by the roadside to open it. The seeds were there, and a letter, written in a round, Board-school hand, accompanied them. I was suddenly unable to read; it was the first word, remember, that had come to me from her since that memorable day. I was more than moved; I was shaken, like a tree in the wind.
“I read:—
“‘Vale Farm, Weald,
“‘15 IV. 22.