"Yours affectionately,

"AARON DUNN."


That was all. It was very short, and did not contain one word of
love; but it made the widow's heart leap for joy. She was rather
afraid that Aaron was angry, he wrote so curtly and with such a
brusque business-like attention to mere facts; but surely he could
have but one object in coming there. And then he alluded specially
to a wife. So the widow's heart leapt with joy.

But how was she to tell Susan? She ran up stairs almost breathless
with haste, to the bedroom door; but then she stopped; too much joy
she had heard was as dangerous as too much sorrow; she must think it
over for a while, and so she crept back again.

But after breakfast--that is, when she had sat for a while over her
teacup--she returned to the room, and this time she entered it. The
letter was in her hand, but held so as to be hidden;--in her left
hand as she sat down with her right arm towards the invalid.

"Susan dear," she said, and smiled at her child, "you'll be able to
get up this morning? eh, dear?"

"Yes, mother," said Susan, thinking that her mother objected to this
idleness of her lying in bed. And so she began to bestir herself.

"I don't mean this very moment, love. Indeed, I want to sit with