ue so gorgeous that it seems heaven turned inside out, and in the air
is the snap of coolness that makes one want to walk and walk and walk,
and its crispness means fall is coming. I love the fall. I can't
think of anything I do not love to-day except Elizabeth Hamilton Carter
and Grandmother Brandon, and I don't exactly abhor them. I just don't
like them, and prefer to stay out of their way. But everybody else in
town is a dear, and I wish I knew I was coming back next summer. That
is--

It doesn't matter what is or what isn't. The thing that matters is
that this morning I went to the post-office, as usual, but, what was
not as usual, I got what I had long been looking for, and which had
come not for endless, endless days. When I saw the big batch of
letters and things from Billy, and knew that all my fears were at an
end, I was so excited I could not speak without signs that shouldn't
show, and, lest some one stop me, I put the mail inside my shirt-waist
and hopped on Skylark and flew out of town.

I didn't stop until I got to a big chestnut-tree about three miles from
Rose Hill, and there I took off Skylark's bridle and let her have all
the grass she could eat, and then I sat down and sorted the letters
out. There were four from Billy and twelve cards and two packages, and
at first I couldn't understand why they had been held up, why I hadn't
gotten them before; and then I saw they were postmarked from the same
place, and had been mailed within three days of one another. That
puzzled me, so I decided to open them and find out what was the
matter--whether it was the Western girl or something else.

I ought to have known it was something else! And I have been
wondering, ever since I read the letters and found out about the
accident to Billy's eyes, when he came near being shot and the powder
got in them and nearly put them out, why it is that people are so
mistrusting and why we let one thing we can't understand make us forget
what we ought to understand very well. Ten thousand kind things, right
things, nice things we take for granted, and then at the first thing we
think isn't kind or right or nice we forget the others and howl and
snort about the one we do not like. At least that is what I did. Not
outwardly, of course, but inwardly, for I'm pretty toplofty about being
treated right, and I flare out and say things I shouldn't at times, and
afterward I am so ashamed of myself that a worm of the dust is