Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/203

192 broken and overwhelmed—rather it seemed that of one who, utterly sad, was master of himself. "Sit down, Floyd; it has been a hard trip for you. Here is something that you will like to keep."

He opened a drawer of his desk and took out a sheet of paper, half filled with his wife's handwriting.

"It is a letter to you that she began just before she was taken ill—and was never able to finish," said Colonel Halket, and as he gave it to Floyd there were tears in his eyes. "She left it lying on her desk; I found it there and put it away for her—and—and then I put it away for you." Floyd looked up from reading it with wet eyes.

"Thank you, Grandfather," he said. "Have you read what she has written?"

His grandfather nodded. "Yes. I thought you would n't mind."

"She speaks of the weather and of having caught a little cold, and makes light of it," said Floyd. "And passes on from that to warning me to be careful." He smiled sadly. She never thought of herself for longer than a moment, did she?"

"And all the more reason why some one else should have thought for her," Colonel Halket said. "But I never noticed—I never realized—if I only had!—"

"She was ill only a few days?" Floyd asked.

"Longer than that, I think—if I had only noticed," replied Colonel Halket, with bitter self-reproach. "She had been interested in organizing a Women's Club out at New Rome—she had given money for a building where they should have reading-rooms and gymnasium and everything the men have—your friend Lee is to build it; she made three trips down from Canada during the summer about it, as perhaps you know. And all the fall she had been very busy interesting the women in it and explaining it to them and trying to provide some place as a substitute until the new house should be built. She used to go out to New Rome three or four times a week