"She really doesn't," answered Missy, not too engaged in steeling
herself against his crunching of her shoulder bones to register the
soubriquet, "bounder."

"Are you sure you didn't make most of it up?" Young Doc knew well
Missy's strain of romanticism. But she strove to convince him that,
for once, she was by way of being a realist.

"She despises him. She can't bear to go on with it. She can't stand
it another hour. I heard her say so myself." Young Doc, crunching
her shoulder bones worse than ever, breathed hard, but said nothing.
Missy proffered bashfully:

"I think, maybe, she wants to marry you, Doc."

Young Doc then, just at the moment she couldn't have borne the vise
a second longer, let go her shoulders, and smiled a smile which, for
her, would have eased a splintered bone itself.

"We'll quickly find that out," he said, and his voice was more
buoyant than she had heard it in months. "Missy, do you think you
could get a note to her right away?"

Missy nodded eagerly.

He scribbled the note on the back of a letter and folded it with the
Poem in the used envelope. "There won't be any answer," he directed
Missy, "unless she brings it herself. Just get it to her without
anyone's seeing."