“Yes, for myself,” answered Amy. “But it is my husband!”—she almost screamed the word—“And I will trust nobody to take care of him. They can’t know how to treat him or he would love—”

She did not finish the sentence, for the postman’s knock came to the door. She bounded off to see what he had brought. She returned with a look of triumph—a look so wildly exultant that her hostess was momentarily alarmed, thinking that she may have appropriated a letter not addressed to her.

“Now I shall know the truth!” she declared. “This is from him!”

And with that she flew to her room. Miss Dasomma should not hear a word of it! How dared she keep from her what she knew about her husband!

It was Corney’s first letter to her. It was filled, not with direct complaints, but a general grumble. Here is a part of it.

I do wish you were here, Amy, my own dearest! I love nobody like you—I love nobody but you. If I did wrong in telling you a few diddle-daddies, it was because I loved you so I could not do without you. And what comforts me for any wrong I have done is that I have you. That would make up to a man for anything short of being hanged! You little witch, how did you contrive to make a fool of a man like me! I should have been in none of this scrape but for you! My mother is very kind to me, of course—ever so much better company than Hester! she never looks as if a fellow had to be put up with, or forgiven, or anything of that sort, in her high and mighty way. But you do get tired of a mother always keeping on telling you how much she loves you. You can’t help thinking there must be something behind it all. Depend upon it she wants something of you—wants you to be good, I daresay—to repent, don’t you know, as they call it! They’re all right, I suppose, but it ain’t nice for all that. And that Hester has never told my father yet.