“Men are such funny things, bless them!  To think of that fine young man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion, being scared to death because a little lady has a headache.”

All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, and towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, saying that Tommy the Mate had sent them.

“Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?” I asked, whereupon the sly thing, who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I was forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, and that he had told her not to say so.

“What’s he doing now?” I asked.

“Writing a letter,” said Price, “and judging by the times he has torn it up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, I can tell you.”

I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon it came up to me.

It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted me like wax over a candle.  I have it still, and though Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin—­my boy who could never learn his lessons.

"Dear Mary,—­I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I think it’s all my fault I am ready to kick myself.

“Don’t worry about what I was saying last night.  I was mad to think what might happen to you while I should be down there, but I’ve been thinking it over since and I’ve come to the conclusion that if their is anything to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so when we meet again before I go away we’ll never say another word on the subject—­that’s a promice.

“I can’t go until your better though, so I’m just sending the jaunting car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the expedision on account of illness, and if they think it’s mine it won’t matter because it’s something worse.

“But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a sand-boy.

“Yours,

“Mart."_

To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account, seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in the hands of God.

Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth, and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mate at the other end of the lawn.

I don’t know why I took so much pains with my dress that night.  I did not expect to see Martin again.  I was sending him away from me.  Yet never before had I dressed myself with so much care.  I put on the soft white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck.