Sometimes there was only the date at a late hour, and "Good night, mother dear. This has been my 'busy day.' Interesting things have happened. Heaps to tell you when I get home, which I hope now will be soon. Perhaps in my very next I can set the date."
She had lived on his letters, watching for each as eagerly as a maiden might watch for word from her lover. Was he not her lover? All she had in all the world, she told herself proudly, and was satisfied, and smiled over that word, "Dearest," that fell as naturally from his pen as from his lips.
That next letter in which perhaps he would set the date of his return was waited for in almost feverish impatience. There was so much she wanted to do just before he came. She had planned to set the house and grounds in festive array as for the coming of a conqueror. Actually his first home-coming of any note in which she was there to greet him! Always before they had come together.
The watched-for letter was delayed. There occurred a longer interval by several days than there had been before, between letters. Mrs. Burnham allowed herself to grow almost nervous over this, and watched the newspapers hourly, glancing over foreign items in feverish haste. She talked about the strangeness of this delay with her friends, until the most sympathetic among them laughed a little and told each other that that spoiled mother was really absurd! And at last it came.
She remembered--she will always remember that October evening when, the shades being drawn close and a brisk fire burning in the grate, she had seated herself near it in a luxurious reading chair and, merely for company, had pushed Erskine's favorite easy-chair just opposite and laughed a little at her folly, and tried to assure herself that young Ben had returned long ago with the evening mail, which had to be sent for, if one could not wait until morning. And then--Ben's step had crunched on the gravel outside, and she had held her breath to listen, and--in another minute it lay in her lap! A thick letter, when she had expected only a few hurried lines. It was almost like the steamer letter that he had written her on going out. It couldn't be a steamer letter! not yet! She seized it eagerly and studied the postmark. Could he be coming so soon that this was really her last letter?