After that for a little time there was no sound, save the sound of the rain, and, now and then, the soft sigh that escaped Marjorie’s lips.

How strange it was, she reasoned with herself, for her to care at all!  What if Hollis did not want to answer that last letter of hers, written more than two months ago, just after Linnet’s wedding day?  That had been a long letter; perhaps too long.  But she had been so lonesome, missing everybody.  Linnet, and Morris, and Mr. Holmes, and Miss Prudence had gone to her grandfather’s for the sea bathing, and the girl had come to help her mother, and she had walked over to his mother’s and talked about everything to her and then written that long letter to him, that long letter that had been unanswered so long.  When his letter was due she had expected it, as usual, and had walked to the post-office, the two miles and a half, for the sake of the letter and having something to do.  She could not believe it when the postmaster handed her only her father’s weekly paper, she stood a moment, and then asked, “Is that all?” And the next week came, and the next, and the next, and no letter from him; and then she had ceased, with a dull sense of loss and disappointment, to expect any answer at all.  Her mother inquired briskly every day if her letter had come and urged her to write a note asking if he had received it, for he might be waiting for it all this time, but shyness and pride forbade that, and afterward his mother called and spoke of something that he must have read in that letter.  She felt how she must have colored, and was glad that her father called her, at that moment, to help him shell corn for the chickens.

When she returned to the house, brightened up and laughing, her mother told her that Mrs. Rheid had said that Hollis had begun to write to her regularly and she was so proud of it.  “She says it is because you are going away and he wants her to hear directly from him; I guess, too, it’s because he’s being exercised in his mind and thinks he ought to have written oftener before; she says her hand is out of practice and the Cap’n hates to write letters and only writes business letters when it’s a force put.  I guess she will miss you, Marjorie.”

Marjorie thought to herself that she would.

But Marjorie’s mother did not repeat all the conversation; she did not say that she had followed her visitor to the gate and after glancing around to be sure that Marjorie was not near had lowered her voice and said: 

“But I do think it is a shame, Mis’ Rheid, for your Hollis to treat my Marjorie so!  After writing to her four years to give her the slip like this!  And the girl takes on about it, I can see it by her looks, although she’s too proud to say a word.”

“I’m sure I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Rheid.  “Hollis wouldn’t do a mean thing.”

“I don’t know what you call this, then,” Marjorie’s mother had replied spiritedly as she turned towards the house.