"Oh, but you haven't heard the latest ones," Joyce exclaimed. "Mamma's reports of Jack's condition and Jack's own little pencilled scrawls. I can read between the lines just what a desperate fight he is making, and this last one from Mary simply knocked all the props out from under the hope I had been clinging to."
She picked up the last envelope on the pile, postmarked March first, and turned to the closing pages:
"'Jack is so much worse that I can scarcely think of anything else. We are _so_ worried about him. He is in bed all the time now, and is growing so thin and weak. He is very despondent,--something new for him. It keeps us busy trying to think of things to tempt his appetite or to arouse him out of his listlessness. He has always been so cheerful before--so full of jokes and so responsive to any attempt to amuse him. But now he doesn't seem to want to talk or to be read to or anything. Once in a while he'll smile a wan little sort of smile when I repeat some of the children's doings, but he isn't like himself any more. Sometimes I believe he's just worn out with the long effort he's made to be brave and keep up for our sake.
"'It is hard for me to keep my interest in the children keyed up to the proper pitch any more, when all the time I am thinking how pitiful and white he looks, lying back on his pillows. I am telling you exactly how things are because I would want you to tell me if I were in your place and you in mine. I can understand how hard it is for you to be so far away where you can't see for yourself how he is, every hour. I'll try to send a note or postal each day.
"Leaning against the mantel looked down at her thoughtfully"]
"'He's talked about you a lot, lately. Says you have the pioneer spirit of all our old Colonial grandmothers, to stick to your post the way you are doing for our sakes. He's constantly referring to things that happened at the Wigwam, and to the people who used to come there,--Mr. Ellested and the Lees and Phil,--especially Phil. I wish he could drop in here to see us daily as he used to do in Arizona. Maybe Jack would rouse up and take some interest in _him_. He doesn't take any now in the people we have met here, although no one could be kinder than the Rochesters and the Barnabys have been to us.'"