“He is giving me a long time to think things over,” Kate said to Nancy Ellen when there was no letter in the afternoon mail Thursday.

“It may have been lost or delayed,” said Nancy Ellen.  “It will come to-morrow, surely.”

Both of them saw the boy turn in at the gate Friday morning.  Each saw that he carried more than one letter.  Nancy Ellen was on her feet and nearer to the door; she stepped to it, and took the letters, giving them a hasty glance as she handed them to Kate.

“Two,” she said tersely.  “One, with the address written in the clear, bold hand of a gentleman, and one, the straggle of a country clod-hopper.”

Kate smiled as she took the letters:  “I’ll wager my hat, which is my most precious possession,” she said, “that the one with the beautifully written address comes from the ‘clod-hopper,’ and the ‘straggle’ from the ‘gentleman.’”

She glanced at the stamping and addresses and smiled again:  “So it proves,” she said.  “While I’m about it, I’ll see what the ‘clod-hopper’ has to say, and then I shall be free to give my whole attention to the ‘gentleman.’”

“Oh, Kate, how can you!” cried Nancy Ellen.

“Way I’m made, I ’spect,” said Kate.  “Anyway, that’s the way this is going to be done.”

She dropped the big square letter in her lap and ran her finger under the flap of the long, thin, beautifully addressed envelope, and drew forth several quite as perfectly written sheets.  She read them slowly and deliberately, sometimes turning back a page and going over a part of it again.  When she finished, she glanced at Nancy Ellen while slowly folding the sheets.  “Just for half a cent I’d ask you to read this,” she said.

“I certainly shan’t pay anything for the privilege, but I’ll read it, if you want me to,” offered Nancy Ellen.

“All right, go ahead,” said Kate.  “It might possibly teach you that you can’t always judge a man by appearance, or hastily; though just why George Holt looks more like a ‘clod-hopper’ than Adam, or Hiram, or Andrew, it passes me to tell.”

She handed Nancy Ellen the letter and slowly ripped open the flap of the heavy white envelope.  She drew forth the sheet and sat an instant with it in her fingers, watching the expression of Nancy Ellen’s face, while she read the most restrained yet impassioned plea that a man of George Holt’s nature and opportunities could devise to make to a woman after having spent several months in the construction of it.  It was a masterly letter, perfectly composed, spelled, and written; for among his other fields of endeavour, George Holt had taught several terms of country school, and taught them with much success; so that he might have become a fine instructor, had it been in his blood to stick to anything long enough to make it succeed.  After a page as she turned the second sheet Nancy Ellen glanced at Kate, and saw that she had not opened the creased page in her hands.  She flamed with sudden irritation.