This is another day. My bed is very big and lonesome. I am like a little black huckleberry in a pan of milk when I am in it. I can see in the glass how I look in bed. I have a great many new clothes. I have tried them on. Some do not fit and must go back. I have a brown dress. It is real silk to wear on Sunday. I have a white dress. It looks like white clouds in the sky. And a red jacket. And more under things but I like the ones you bought the best, because I like _you_ best.
This is four more days. I have been to church. I stood up and sat down like the others. I liked the feathers on the ladies' hats and the little boys in nightgowns that marched around and sang. Next Sunday I am to go to Sunday School. Mrs. Huntington says I am a Heathen.
I got a chance to touch her. Her back _is_ hard. Now I will say good-by. But I like to write to you; so I hate to send it away but I will begin another letter right now. Maggie will put this in the letter box for me. I like Maggie but I am afraid I will tell her about my past life. Mrs. Huntington says I must never mention bare feet or fish.
P.S.--Mrs. Huntington told a lady I was that, but _you_ know I am just your Jeanne. I love you better than anybody.
Jeanne, you will notice, made no complaints against her rude young cousins and passed lightly over matters that had tried her rather sorely. From her letters, her father gathered that she was much happier than she really was. Perhaps nobody _ever_ enjoyed a letter more than Mr. Duval enjoyed that first one. He went to the post office to get it because no letter-carrier could be expected to deliver mail to a tumble-down shack on the end of a long, far-away dock. He read it in the post office. He read it again in Old Captain's freight car, and when Barney Turcott came in, he too had to hear it.
Then Mollie read it. And as she read, her face was quite beautiful with the "mother-look" that Jeanne liked--it was the only attractive thing about Mollie. Then the children awoke and sat up in their bunks to hear it read aloud. Poor children! they could not understand what had become of their beloved Jeanne.
Afterwards, Mr. Duval laid the letter away in his shabby trunk, beside the little green bottle that still held a shriveled pink rose, the late wild rose that Jeanne had left on his table that last day. He had found what remained of it, on his return from his journey. It was certainly very lonely in that little room evenings, without those lessons.