When she finished the letter, she addressed it plainly, in her own somewhat bold handwriting, to Francis N. Gresham, Jun., Esq., and then took it herself to the little village post-office.  There should be nothing underhand about her correspondence:  all the Greshamsbury world should know of it—­that world of which she had spoken in her letter—­if that world so pleased.  Having put her penny label on it, she handed it, with an open brow and an unembarrassed face, to the baker’s wife, who was Her Majesty’s postmistress at Greshamsbury; and, having so finished her work, she returned to see the table prepared for her uncle’s dinner.  ‘I will say nothing to him,’ she said to herself, ’till I get the answer.  He will not talk to me about it, so why should I trouble him?’

CHAPTER XLIII

THE RACE OF SCATCHERD BECOMES EXTINCT

It will not be imagined, at any rate by feminine readers, that Mary’s letter was written off at once, without alterations and changes, or the necessity for a fair copy.  Letters from one young lady to another are doubtless written in this manner, and even with them it might sometimes be better if more patience had been taken; but with Mary’s first letter to her lover—­her first love-letter, if love-letter it can be called—­much more care was used.  It was copied and re-copied, and when she returned from posting it, it was read and re-read.

‘It is very cold,’ she said to herself; ’he will think I have no heart, that I have never loved him!’ And then she all but resolved to run down to the baker’s wife, and get back her letter, that she might alter it.  ‘But it will be better so,’ she said again.  ’If I touched his feelings now, he would never bring himself to leave me.  It is right that I should be cold with him.  I should be false to myself if I tried to move his love—­I, who have nothing to give him in return for it.’  And so she made no further visit to the post-office, and the letter went on its way.

We will now follow its fortunes for a short while, and explain how it was that Mary received no answer for a week; a week, it may well be imagined, of terrible suspense to her.  When she took it to the post-office, she doubtless thought that the baker’s wife had nothing to do but to send it up to the house at Greshamsbury, and that Frank would receive it that evening, or, at latest, early on the following morning.  But this was by no means so.  The epistle was posted on a Friday afternoon, and it behoved the baker’s wife to send it into Silverbridge—­Silverbridge being the post-town—­so that all due formalities, as ordered by the Queen’s Government, might there be perfected.  Now, unfortunately the post-boy had taken his departure before Mary reached the shop, and it was not, therefore, dispatched till Saturday.  Sunday was always a dies non with the Greshamsbury Mercury, and, consequently, Frank’s letter was not delivered at the house till Monday morning; at which time Mary had for two long days been waiting with weary heart for the expected answer.