Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/318

308 I take them home with me if I give you the price of another pair? I 'd just like to keep them always, to think of the little thing, sitting out on the rocks, knitting away on stockings for the soldiers."

Netty was still studying the letter. She was somewhat familiar with the constrained and reticent forms of rural New England's letter-writing.

"I 'm not sure yet about its being a little girl, Mr. Hale," she said. "It may be; but I incline now to think that it is a grown-up woman, who hardly ever writes a letter."

"Do you think so?" said Joe, earnestly. "Well, if it 's a woman, I 'd like first-rate to see her. I 've come to have a real feeling, as if I ought to know her, somehow."

Netty laughed.

"Nothing easier, Mr. Hale. It is not a very long journey to Provincetown," she said.

"That 's so," said Joe; "but it 's the last place a man 's likely ever to go to, especially from New York State."

"Sarah! I do believe there 's a kind of romance growing out of these red stockings, after all," said Netty, when Sarah came in. "Joe Hale 's been here, and showed me the drollest letter you ever saw, from that Matilda Bennet. It begins: 'Respected sir,' and has just such droll, stiff, short sentences as country people always write. He thinks it is a little girl; but I don't believe it. I did n't want to tell him so; but I 've a notion it 's