"By a mere accident I heard the other day of your whereabouts, and, as I for one still feel the same interest in my playmate that I used to, I resolved, I think I may say courageously, to discover whether he still gave promise of fulfilling all the hopes I then entertained for him.
"I wonder if some of our early experiences are still as fresh in your mind as they are in mine! Do you remember that day you made me stand guard while you 'blew' old Jones's eggs in retaliation for his having turned informer against you? I think it was the time he told about your having promoted a fight between two dogs. And do you remember the day on the skating-pond when you broke through the ice and frightened me into fits by disappearing three times below the surface, while all the time you were standing, as you afterward confessed, on solid bottom? I thought then I should never forgive you for causing me in that unguarded moment to betray my feelings. And then the telegraph scheme by which we communicated that time I had the measles. It all seems to have occurred in some other world, looking back at it now; and yet what happy times those were! I believe I could go on forever with these reminiscences; but perhaps they are not as sweet to you as they are to me; perhaps I am only boring you with them. It would be a great disappointment to me, though, to know that you never looked back with a sigh to those days and never gave a thought to your once so devoted playmate.
"I am going to a place called Stillton this summer. I dare say you never heard of it: it is in Maine; and I must confess I anticipate a very stupid time there. Perhaps I shall have nothing else to do but reflect upon the days of my early youth. Am I quite forgotten?
"Your playmate of old,
"Jane Jennings.
"Boston, June 10, 188-."
The nom de plume was borrowed from Mabel's faithful servant,—nurse in earlier days, a description of maid now,—and was a safe one, as old Jane proper was never known to receive letters, and, moreover, could not have deciphered her own name on the envelope had one arrived for her.
The conflict on the following morning as to whether it should be sent or destroyed, the tremble of the little hand that finally dropped it irrevocably into the iron post-box, the vain reproaches and unanswered longings for its return, the subsequent prayers that it might by some providential interference be intercepted or miscarry, all followed in due course, as well as later a revulsion of feeling and an anxious watching for the mails, hope deferred, and sickness of heart.
Friday came. The journey, miserable as was its object, was accomplished, and Stillton, in all its tomb-like silence and drowsy do-nothingness, with its few glaring white houses and its one dusty road, offering no apology or explanation whatever for its purposeless existence, at last was reached, and Farmer Galusha Krinklebottom, in accordance with Dr. Nevercure's arrangements, met the jaded travellers at the station in his rickety shay, prepared to take them over to the cottage.
"'Tain't more'n three mile," he said consolingly. "The roads ain't none too good this season, an' Kittie—that's her" (pointing to his mare)—"don't feel over-skittish; she's nigh onter fourteen year, an' right smart, too, fur her age, but sorter broken-winded latterly; but I guess we'll make it afore dark.—Go 'long, Kittie!"
The ancient mare started off. Her fore-legs were stiff and jointless, her hip-bones painfully prominent, her ribs sadly bare, and her nose hung dejectedly toward the ground; but she still possessed some mechanical power of locomotion, and the "shay" began to squeak and rattle in her wake. Galusha was proud of his native hamlet. "That there's our meetin'-house," he said, but its whitewash and green blinds did not seem to excite the travellers' admiration. "An' that longish house yonder's Pincus's."
"Pincus's?" asked Mabel, with a yawn.