"You must wait," said our sympathizing friend.
Yes, we must wait. Yet "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
"Have you been to see the woman who sent for you to-day?"
"No! It is nobody that I know. Some mistake."
"But she sent her name by the black woman, when she came the second time."
"I know it, but it is no one that I know. The name is utterly unknown to me. It is a French name. Some mistake." There was a mistake.
What prompted me to look again at the name? I knew it as well as I should if I looked at that paper a hundred times. Yet I was prompted to look at it once more. The desire was irresistible. Who has ever felt a longing after something unseen, unknown, unheard, undefined, something that he feels as though he must have or die, yet knows not how to obtain, may realize the intensity of my desire to see that paper once more. Where is it? This pocket, and that is searched, turned wrong side out, and turned back again; the table, floor, books, papers, hunted over, but nowhere can it be found. What has spirited it away? It could not blow out of the window, for there is no air stirring.
"It must," said the lady, "have gone down on the tea-tray--I will call Bridget."
A woman is worth a dozen men for thought, and this time she thought truly. It had gone down that way, and gone into the slop-bucket, and into the street.
"Bridget, will you take a lamp and go out and see if you can find it."
"Yes, sir, certainly, and I think I can."
Blessed hope. My friend was curious to know, what in the world I wanted of that piece of paper? "You say, you remember the name and number perfectly, and yet you act as though it was of the utmost value. I recollect seeing you once when you had lost a twenty dollar bill, as cool and careless as though it had been as worthless as this little scrap of paper. Now you act strangely, what can it mean?"
"I don't know--I know I want to see that paper. I cannot tell why."
"Well, you will soon be gratified. She has found it. Do wait, don't be so impatient to meet her at the foot of the stairs."
I did not wait though. I gave one glance at the soiled scrap--it was enough--the pen and ink name had faded out, but there were three words--talismanic words--in pencil marks, evidently added as an after-thought by her who had first written her name in ink--words which sent me out of the door, and half way to the next street, before that voice, sent after me from the stair-head, of "Do stop him, Bridget, he is crazy, to go out in this rain," had reached my ears. It did not stop me--I was gone beyond the reach of her voice. The girl stood amazed. She looked at the scrap of paper with about the same degree of astonishment as did the savage tribe at the white man's paper talk.