"What am I to do with this?"

Doctor McCall was gone, never to come back. It was like touching his
hand far off to read this message to him. Besides, Kitty was curious.
She opened the envelope.

"Come to me at once. You will soon be free," without any signature
but an initial. The melodramatic mystery of it would have cautioned
knowing women, but Kitty was not knowing.

"If he had received this an hour ago, the 'way of escape' would have
been found. He would have been free to marry Maria." So much she
understood. She sat down and was quiet for half an hour. It was the
first wretched half hour of her life--so wretched that she forgot to
cry.

"It would make him very happy to marry Maria," she said, getting
up and speaking aloud. Then she opened the door and went up to her
chamber, her thoughts keeping time with her swift motions. It seemed
to her that she still spoke aloud. "If I were a man I could go to this
house in Philadelphia and receive this message, which will set him
free" (beginning to fold the dresses in her closet). "It will never
reach him otherwise. I could find and bring him to Maria. But I
never was five miles from Berrytown in my life, _I_ never could go"
(dragging out a great trunk and packing the dresses into it). "It
would be a friendly thing for some man to do for him. Maria could not
do so much" (cramming in undergarments enough for a year's wear). "If
I were a man! He'd not snub me then as he does now, when I am only
Kitty. If this could be done it would bring happiness for life to
him." (The trunk was packed as she had seen her mother's. She was