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im to cum hif hi cant pi by septmbr but hi am trustin God der polly e asn't forgot us. hi 'm glad the poppies grew. ere's a disy hi am sendin yu hi can mike the butonoles yet. hi do sum hevry di mrs purdy gave me fourpence one di for sum i mide for her hi ad a cup of tee that di. hi am appy thinkin of yu der polly. "And Polly is dead!" burst from Mrs. Motherwell as something gathered in her throat. She laid the letter down and looked straight ahead of her. The sloping walls of the little kitchen loft, with its cobwebbed beams faded away, and she was looking into a squalid little room where an old woman, bent and feeble, sat working buttonholes with trembling fingers. Her eyes were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to every sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the latch. The old woman rises uncertainly, a great hope in her eyes--it is the letter--the letter at last. The door opens, and the old woman falls cowering and moaning, and wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the officer! Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands. "Oh God be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed. Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was passing through his wife's mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest. The barley was whitening already. The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh at himself--the idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him as quick as anybody. "I kind o' wish now that I had given her something--it would have pleased her so--some little thing," he added hastily. Mrs. Motherwell came across the yard bareheaded. "Come into the house, Sam," she said gently. "I want to show you something." He looked up quickly, but saw something in his wife's face that prevented him from speaking. He follo
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