went for them--in the dark; for she piqued herself on the precise
neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily
at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for
anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of
Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about
any of the things which had belonged to her mother; and many of the
letters were addressed to her--yellow bundles of love-letters,
sixty or seventy years old.

Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh; but she stifled it
directly, as if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time,
or of life either. We agreed to look them over separately, each
taking a different letter out of the same bundle and describing its
contents to the other before destroying it. I never knew what sad
work the reading of old-letters was before that evening, though I
could hardly tell why. The letters were as happy as letters could
be--at least those early letters were. There was in them a vivid
and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and
full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living
hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as
nothing to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I
believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the tears stealing
down the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty's cheeks, and her
spectacles often wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would
light the other candle, for my own eyes were rather dim, and I
wanted more light to see the pale, faded ink; but no, even through
her tears, she saw and remembered her little economical ways.

The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and
ticketed (in Miss Jenkyns's handwriting) "Letters interchanged