On the next morning Susan again did not get up;--nor did she hear, or if she heard she did not recognise, the step of the postman who brought a letter to the door. Early, before the widow’s breakfast, the postman came, and the letter which he brought was as follows:--
“I have now got a permanent situation on the Erie line, and the salary is enough for myself and a wife. At least I think so, and I hope you will too. I shall be down at Saratoga to-morrow evening, and I hope neither Susan, nor you will refuse to receive me.
That was all. It was very short, and did not contain one word of love; but it made the widow’s heart leap for joy. She was rather afraid that Aaron was angry, he wrote so curtly and with such a brusque business-like attention to mere facts; but surely he could have but one object in coming there. And then he alluded specially to a wife. So the widow’s heart leapt with joy.
But how was she to tell Susan? She ran up stairs almost breathless with haste, to the bedroom door; but then she stopped; too much joy she had heard was as dangerous as too much sorrow; she must think it over for a while, and so she crept back again.
But after breakfast--that is, when she had sat for a while over her teacup--she returned to the room, and this time she entered it. The letter was in her hand, but held so as to be hidden;--in her left hand as she sat down with her right arm towards the invalid.
“Susan dear,” she said, and smiled at her child, “you’ll be able to get up this morning? eh, dear?”
“Yes, mother,” said Susan, thinking that her mother objected to this idleness of her lying in bed. And so she began to bestir herself.
“I don’t mean this very moment, love. Indeed, I want to sit with you for a little while,” and she put her right arm affectionately round her daughter’s waist.
“Ah! there’s one dearer than me, I guess,” and Mrs. Bell smiled sweetly, as she made the maternal charge against her daughter.
Susan raised herself quickly in the bed, and looked straight into her mother’s face. “Mother, mother,” she said, “what is it? You’ve something to tell. Oh, mother!” And stretching herself over, she struck her hand against the corner of Aaron’s letter. “Mother, you’ve a letter. Is he coming, mother?” and with eager eyes and open lips, she sat up, holding tight to her mother’s arm.