Her letter ran thus—­her poor, innocent letter—­dated ever so long ago—­indeed, the time when she had told her father she should write —­the night before her marriage-day: 

“My dear friend,—­I am very busy, but have striven hard to find an hour in which to write to you, for I do not think people forget their friends because they have gotten other people to be mindful of too.  I think a good and happy love only makes other loves feel closer and dearer.  I am sure I have been greeting (Old English:  weeping) like a bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married, whenever I called to mind you and my dear father.  You will be very good to him while I am away?  But I need not ask you that.  Six months, he says—­I mean Captain Bruce—­will, according to the Edinburg doctor’s advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for he declares he likes no other place half so well.

“I am right to go with him for these six months—­am I not?  But I need not ask; you sent me word so yourself.  He had nobody to take care of him—­nobody in the world but me.  His sisters are gay, lively girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost strangers.  He tells me I might as well send him away to die at once, unless I went with him as his wife.  So I go.

“I hope he will come home quite strong and well, and able to begin building our cottage on that wee bit of ground on the hill-side above Cairnforth which you have promised to give to him.  I am inexpressibly happy about it.  We shall all live so cheerily together—­and meet every day—­the Castle, the Manse, and the Cottage.  When I think of that, and of my coming back, I am almost comforted for this sad going away—­leaving my dear father, and the boys, and you.

“Papa has been so good to me, you do not know.  I shall never forget it —­nor will Ernest.  Ernest thought he would stand in the way of our marriage, but he did not.  He said I must choose for myself, as he had done when he married my dearest mother; that I had been a good girl to him, and a good daughter would make a good wife; also that a good wife would not cease to be a good daughter because she was married—­ especially living close at hand, as we shall always live:  Ernest has promised it.

“Thus, you see, nobody I love will lose me at all, nor shall I forget them:  I should hate myself if it were possible.  I shall be none the less a daughter to my father—­none the less a friend to you.  I will never, never forget you, my dear!” (here the writing became blurred, as if large drops had fallen on the paper while she wrote.) “It is twelve o’clock, and I must bid you good-night—­and God bless you ever and ever!  The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to you.