One thought in her solitary room that day drew streams of tears down Ellen's cheeks. "My letter! my letter! what shall I do to get you?" she said to herself. "It serves me right; I oughtn't to have got in a passion; oh! I have got a lesson this time!"
The Sunday with Alice met all Ellen's hopes. She wrote a very long letter to her mother, giving the full history of the day. How pleasantly they had ridden to church on the pretty gray pony she half the way and Alice the other half, talking to each other all the while; for Mr. Humphreys had ridden on before. How lovely the road was, "winding about round the mountain, up and down," and with such a wide fair view, and "part of the time close along by the edge of the water." This had been Ellen's first ride on horseback. Then the letter described the little Carra-carra church Mr. Humphreys' excellent sermon, "every word of which she could understand;" Alice's Sunday-school, in which she was sole teacher; and how Ellen had four little ones put under _her_ care; and told how while Mr. Humphreys went on to hold a second service at a village some six miles off, his daughter ministered to two infirm old women at Carra-carra reading and explaining the Bible to the one and to the other, who was blind, repeating the whole substance of her father's sermon. "Miss Alice told me that nobody could enjoy a sermon better than that old woman, but she cannot go out, and every Sunday Miss Alice goes and preaches to her, she says." How Ellen went home in the boat with Thomas and Margery, and spent the rest of the day and the night also at the parsonage; and how polite and kind Mr. Humphreys had been. "He's a very grave-looking man, indeed," said the letter, "and not a bit like Miss Alice; he is a great deal older than I expected."
This letter was much the longest Ellen had ever written in her life; but she had set her heart on having her mother's sympathy in her new pleasures, though not to be had but after the lapse of many weeks, and beyond a sad interval of land and sea. Still she must have it; and her little fingers travelled busily over the paper hour after hour, as she found time, till the long epistle was finished. She was hard at work at it Tuesday afternoon when her aunt called her down; and obeying the call, to her great surprise and delight she found Alice seated in the chimney-corner and chatting away with her old grandmother, who looked remarkably pleased. Miss Fortune was bustling round, as usual, looking at nobody, though putting in her word now and then.