That night Mrs. Corbett took her pen in hand.  Mrs. Corbett was more at home with the potato-masher or the rolling-pin, but when duty called her she followed, even though it involved the using of unfamiliar tools.

She wrote a lengthy letter to Mr. Robert Grant, care of The Imperial Lumber Company, Toronto, Ontario: 

“Dear and respected sir,” Mrs. Corbett wrote, “I take my pen in hand to write you a few things that maybe you don’t know but ought to know, and to tell you your daughter is well, but homesick sometimes hoping that you are enjoying the same blessings as this leaves us at present.  Your daughter is my neighbor and a blessed girl she is, and it is because I love her so well that I am trying to write to you now, not being handy at it, as you see; also my pen spits.  As near as I can make out you and her’s cut off the same cloth; both of you are touchy and quick, and, if things don’t suit you, up and coming.  But she’s got a good heart in her as ever I see.  One day she told me a lot about how good you were to her when her mother died, and about the prayer her mother used to tell her to say:  ‘Help papa and mamma and Evelyn to be chums.’  When she came to that she broke right down and cried, and says she to me, ’I haven’t either of them now!’ If you’d a-seen her that day you’d have forgot everything only that she was your girl.  Then she sat down and wrote you a long letter, but when she got done didn’t she tear it up, because she said you told her you wouldn’t read her letters.  I saved a bit of the letter for you to see, and here it is.  We don’t any of us see what made you so mad at the man she got—­he’s a good fellow, and puts up with all her high temper.  She’s terrible like yourself, excuse me for saying so and meaning no harm.  If she’d married some young scamp that was soaked in whiskey and cigarettes you’d a-had something to kick about.  I don’t see what you find in him to fault.  Maybe you’ll be for telling me to mind my own business, but I am not used to doing that, for I like to take a hand any place I see I can do any good, and if I was leaving my girl fretting and lonely all on account of my dirty temper, both in me and in her, though for that she shouldn’t be blamed, I’d be glad for someone to tell me.  If you should want to send her a Christmas present, and she says you never forgot her yet, come yourself.  It’s you she’s fretting for.  You can guess it’s lonely for her here when I tell you she and me’s the only women in this neighborhood, and I keep a stopping-house, and am too busy feeding hungry men to be company for anyone.

“Hoping these few lines will find you enjoying the same blessings,

“Yours respectively,

“MAGGIE CORBETT.”

The writing of the letter took Mrs. Corbett the greater part of the afternoon, but when it was done she felt a great weight had been lifted from her heart.  She set about her preparations for the evening meal with more than usual speed.