as made to feel herself
so welcome. To return to Philadelphia meant to write and ask for the
expenses of transportation. She had burned too many bridges behind her
to meet the humility of such a request just yet; for that meant the
subjection of her whole future to Jerusha Darby's will, and against such
subjection Jerry's spirit rebelled mightily.

Every day for two weeks the girl had gone to the post-office with an
eager, expectant face. Every evening she had asked York Macpherson if he
had heard anything from Philadelphia since her coming, the pretended
indifference in her tone hardly concealing the longing behind the query.
But not a line from the East had come to New Eden for her.

On the afternoon of this day the postmaster had hurried through the
letters because he, too, had caught the meaning of the hunger in the
earnest eyes watching him through the little window among the
letter-boxes. The mail was heavy to-day, but the distributer paused with
one letter, long enough to look at it carefully, and then, leaving his
work half finished, he hurried to the window.

"Here's something for you. Aren't you Miss Swaim?" he inquired,
courteously, as he pushed the letter toward Jerry's waiting hand.

He had lived in Kansas since the passage of the homestead law. He knew
the mark of homesickness on the face of a late arrival. Something in the
cultivation of a new land puts a gentler culture into the soul. Out of
the common heartache, the common sacrifice, the common need, have grown
the open-hearted, keen-sighted, fine-fibered folk of the big and
generous Middle West, the very heart of which, to the Kansan, is Kansas.

The postmaster turned quickly back to his task. He did not see the
girl's face; he only felt that she walked away on air.

At York Macpherson's office she hesitated a moment, then hurried inside.
York was in his private room, but the door to it stood open, and Jerry
caught sight of a woman within.

"I beg your pardon." She blushed confusedly. "I don't want to intrude; I
only wanted to stop long enough to read a letter from home."

Jerry's genuine embarrassment was very pretty and appealing, but York
was shrewd enough to know that it came from the letter in her hand, not
from any connection with his office or its occupants. Mrs. Stellar
Bahrr, however, who happened to be the woman in the inner room, did not
see the incident with York's eyes.

"Just come in here, Miss Swaim, and make yourself at home,"