“When you get this please sit down and count up the years that have passed since we parted.  Then think how our plans have gone awry.  You must also think of me waiting here for you in the midst of a marrying world.  All my friends have taken their mates and passed on.  I went to Doctor Franklin to-day and told him that I was an old lady well past nineteen and accused him of having a heart of stone.  He said that he had not sent for you because you were making such handsome progress in your work.  I said:  ’You do not think of the rapid progress I am making toward old age.  You forget, too, that I need a husband as badly as The Gazette needs a philosopher.  I rebel.  You have made me an American—­you and Jack, I will no longer consent to taxation without representation.  Year by year I am giving up some of my youth and I am not being consulted about it.’

“Said he:  ’I would demand justice of the king.  I suppose he thinks that his country can not yet afford a queen, I shall tell him that he is imitating George the Third and that he had better listen to the voice of the people.’

“Now, my beloved hero, the English girl who is not married at nineteen is thought to be hopeless.  There are fine lads who have asked my father for the right to court me and still I am waiting for my brave deliverer and he comes not.  I can not forget the thrush’s song and the enchanted woods.  They hold me.  If they have not held you—­if for any reason your heart has changed—­you will not fail to tell me, will you?  Is it necessary that you should be great and wise and rich and learned before you come to me?  Little by little, after many talks with the venerable Franklin, I have got the American notion that I would like to go away with you and help you to accomplish these things and enjoy the happiness which was ours, for a little time, and of which you speak in your letters.  Surely there was something very great in those moments.  It does not fade and has it not kept us true to their promise?  But, Jack, how long am I to wait?  You must tell me.”

This letter went to the heart of the young man.  She had deftly set before him the gross unfairness of delay.  He felt it.  Ever since the parting he had been eager to go, but his father was not a rich man and the family was large.  His own salary had been little more than was needed for clothing and books.  That autumn it had been doubled and the editor had assured him that higher pay would be forthcoming.  He hesitated to tell the girl how little he earned and how small, when measured in money, his progress had seemed to be.  He was in despair when his friend Solomon Binkus arrived from Virginia.  For two years the latter had been looking after the interests of Major Washington out in the Ohio River country.  They dined together that evening at The Crooked Billet and Solomon told him of his adventures in the West, and frontier stories of the notorious, one-legged robber, Micah Harpe, and his den on the shore of the Ohio and of the cunning of the outlaw in evading capture.