I wrote to Rachel from Cambridge, and she answered my letter.  It was like herself.  “How very kind you have been,” she wrote, “to me, a poor stranger-girl!  If I knew how to write, I would try to let you know how much I feel it.  I can’t understand your wanting to marry a girl like me.  I know so little, am so little.  I hope it will not offend you, but I think I ought to say, even if it does, that you must not write any more.  Sometime you will thank me, in your heart, for not doing as you want me to now.”

I saw that I had indeed a noble nature to deal with.  Here was a girl, all alone in the world, rejecting the sweetest offering that could be made to a friendless one,—­a loving heart,—­lest that heart should be made to suffer on her account!  Of course I kept on writing, though my letters were not answered.  I sent her letter to Fanny, who wrote me to keep up good courage, for she had already put her irons in the fire,—­that, although now fully convinced that Rachel was too good for me, she had herself begun to love her, and was at work on her own account.

I always kept Fanny’s letters.  Here is a part of one I received after having been a few weeks from home:—­

“I have just got my answer from Mrs. James.  She is just the woman to help us along.  Rachel wants to come!  I have spoken to Aunt Huldah.  It is too bad, but I had to be a bit of a hypocrite, to hint that I was rather poorly, and how nice it would be to have a little help.  She had just got in a new piece to weave, and so was quite ready to take up with my plan.  I shall get well as soon as it will do, for she seems anxious.  Aunt has a stiff way, I know, but there’s a warm corner somewhere in her heart, and we are in it, and you know there’s always room for one more.”

It was a week, and more, before I got another letter from my scheming sister.  It began this way:—­

“Your Rachel is a beauty!  Just as sweet and modest as she can be!  She is sitting at the end-window of my room, watching the vessels.  I am writing at the front-window.  She has just looked at me.  What eyes she has!  If she only knew whom I was writing to!  When I see you, I shall tell you the particulars.  But don’t come posting home now, and spoil everything.  You shall hear all that is necessary for you to know.”

Fanny need not have cautioned me about coming home.  It was happiness enough then to think of Rachel sitting in my sister’s room,—­of Aunt Huldah’s keen eyes watching her daily life.

“My plan works,” writes Fanny, a week afterwards.  “Aunt seems to take a liking to Rachel, which I, if anything, rather discourage, thinking she will be more likely to stick to it.  Rachel is a sister after my own heart.  I do like those people who, while they are so steady and calm, show by their eyes and the tone of the voice what warm, delicate feelings they are keeping to themselves!  She is one of the real good kind!  What a way