could not bring
herself even to think on any other subject.

"It's late," she said, "and I must go home, as mamma will be
expecting me."

Cherry had almost replied that she had not been in so great a hurry
once before, when she had stood in the churchyard with another
companion; but she thought of Rachel's reproachful face when her last
little joke had been uttered, and she refrained.

"She's over head and ears in love," said Cherry to her sister, when
Rachel was gone.

"I'm afraid she has been very foolish," said Martha, seriously.

"I don't see that she has been foolish at all. He's a very nice
fellow, and as far as I can see he's just as fond of her as she is of
him."

"But we know what that means with young men," said Martha, who was
sufficiently serious in her way of thinking to hold by that doctrine
as to wolves in sheep's clothing in which Mrs. Ray had been educated.

"But young men do marry,--sometimes," said Cherry.

"But not merely for the sake of a pretty face or a good figure. I
believe mamma is right in that, and I don't think he'll come back
again."

"If he were my lover I'd have him back," said Cherry, stoutly;--and
so they went away to the brewery.

Rachel on her way home determined that she would write her letter
that night. Her mother was to read it when it was written; that was
understood to be the agreement between them; but there would be no
reason why she should not be alone when she wrote it. She could word
it very differently, she thought, if she sat alone over it in her own
bedroom, than she could do immediately under her mother's eye. She
could not pause and think and perhaps weep over it, sitting at the
parlour table, with her mother in her arm-chair, close by, watching
her. It needed that she should write it with tears, with many
struggles, with many baffled attempts to find the words that would
be wanted,--with her very heart's blood. It must not be tender. No;
she was prepared to omit all tenderness. And it must probably be
short;--but if so its very shortness would be another difficulty. As
she walked along she could not tell herself with what words she would
write it; but she thought that the words would perhaps come to her if
she waited long enough for them in the solitude of her own chamber.

She reached home by nine o'clock and sat with her mother for an hour,
reading out loud some book on which they were then engaged.

"I think I'll go to bed now, mamma," she said.