and constancy to
one man, what have you left to give another?

The river is beginning to show like a silver streak, and a rooster is
crowing. Oh, Uncle Rod, if you were only here. Write and tell me that you
love me.

Your

LITTLE GIRL.

* * * * *

_In the Telegraph Tower._

MY VERY DEAR:

It is after supper, and Beulah and I are out here with Eric. He likes to
have her come, and I play propriety, for Mrs. Bower, in common with most
women of her class, is very careful of her daughter. I know you don't
like that word "class," but please don't think I am using it snobbishly.
Indeed, I think Beulah is much better brought up than the daughters of
folk who think themselves much finer, and Mrs. Bower in her simple way is
doing some very effective chaperoning.

Eric is on night duty in the telegraph tower this week; the other
operator has the day work. The evenings are long, so Beulah brings her
sewing, and keeps Eric company. They really don't have much to say to
each other, so that I am not interrupted when I write. They seem to like
to sit and look out on the river and the stars and the moon coming up
behind the hills.

It is all settled now. Eric told me yesterday. "I am very happy," he
said; "I have been a lonely man."

They are to be married in June, and the things that she is making are to
go into the cedar chest which her father has given her. He found it one
day when he was in Baltimore, and when he showed it to her, he shone with
pleasure. He's a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah is to
marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not far up the road. It is a
dear of a cottage, and Peggy and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the
porch when we come home from school, and peep in at the windows and plan
what we would put into it if we had the furnishing of it. I should like a
house like that, Uncle Rod, for you and me and Diogenes. We'd live happy
ever after, wouldn't we? Some day the world is going to build
"teacherages" just as it now builds parsonages, and the little houses
will help to dignify and uplift the profession.

Your dear letter came just in time, and it was just right. I should have
gone to pieces if you had pitied me, for I was pitying myself dreadfully.
But when I read "Little School-teacher, what would you tell your
scholars?" I knew what you wanted me to answer. I carried your letter in
my pocket to school, and when I rang the bell I kept saying ov