He handed it over. She laid it in her lap and waited as though for him to go.
“Can’t I hear how he is? He’s the best man that ever crossed my path,” he said.
“It happens to be in his wife’s, not his, handwriting--did ever such a scrap of a woman write so sprawling a hand!” she replied, holding the letter up.
“But she’ll let us know in the letter how Crozier is, won’t she?”
Kitty had now recovered herself, and slowly she opened the envelope and took out the letter. As she did so something fluttered to the ground.
Jesse Bulrush picked it up. “That looks nice,” he said, and he whistled in surprise. “It’s a money-draft on a bank.”
Kitty, whose eyes were fixed on the big, important handwriting, answered calmly and without apparently looking, as she took the paper from his hand: “Yes, it’s a wedding present--five hundred dollars to buy what I like best for my home. So she says.”
“Well, that’s magnificent. What will you do with it?”
Kitty rose and held out her hand. “Go back to your flying partner, happy man, and ask her what she would do with five hundred dollars if she had it.”
“She’d buy her lord and master a present with it, of course,” he answered.
“Good-bye, Mr. Rolypoly,” she responded, laughing. “You always could think of things for other people to do; and have never done anything yourself until now. Good-bye, father.”
When he was gone and out of sight her face changed. With sudden anger she crushed and crumpled up the draft for five hundred in her hand. “‘A token of affection from both!’” she exclaimed, quoting from the letter. “One lone leaf of Irish shamrock from him would--”
She stopped. “But he will send a message of his own,” she continued. “He will--he will. Even if he doesn’t, I’ll know that he remembers just the same. He does--he does remember.”
She drew herself up with an effort, and, as it were, shook herself free from the memories which dimmed her eyes.
Not far away a man was riding towards the clump of trees where she was. She saw, and hastened to her horse.
“If I told John all I feel he’d understand. I believe he always has understood,” she added with a far-off look.
The draft was still crushed in her hand when she mounted the beloved horse, whose name now was Shiel.