Lavinia was glad that Marley had gone into newspaper work; much as she had tried she had not been able to conceive of him in exactly the ideal light as a clerk in a railroad office; that position, while it may have had its own promise, nevertheless did not envelope him in the atmosphere she considered native to him. In his new relation to literature, which, in her ignorance, she confounded with journalism, she felt a deep satisfaction, and a new pride, and she was glad when the _Republican_ announced the fact of Marley's new position; she felt that it was a fitting vindication of her lover in the eyes of the people of Macochee and a rebuke for the distrust they had shown in him.
Thereafter her mail was increased, for in addition to his letter Marley sent her the _Courier_ with his work marked; often he marked Weston's as well, and early in June he wrote: "I want you to read Weston's story in Sunday's paper about the Derby; it's a peach; it's the best piece of frill writing that the town has seen in many a day."
The tone of Marley's letters now became more cheerful; it was evident to Lavinia that he was finding an interest in life, and in his descriptions of his daily work and the places all over Chicago it took him to and the people of all sorts it brought him in contact with, she found a new interest for her own life. When he wrote that his salary had been increased because of his story about a Sunday evening service in a church of the colored people in Dearborn Street, it seemed to her that happiness at last had come to them, and if, with the passing of June, she felt a pang at Marley's grieving in one of his letters that this was the month in which they had intended to be married, she was consoled by the rapid progress he was making in his work. His salary had been raised a second time; he was receiving now twenty-five dollars a week; it seemed large to her, and she could not understand why it did not seem large to Marley, even when he wrote that Weston was paid forty dollars a week.
Her chief joy, perhaps, lay in the fact that he seemed to be living more comfortably than he had before. Now that he had left his dismal boarding-house she found a relief from its subtly communicated influence of the stranded wrecks of life, as Marley surely found it in the apartments he was sharing with Weston. She parted as gladly from the knowledge of his landlady as Marley did himself, assuring her that the landlady had "not decreased any in value as a zoo exhibit since first I rhapsodized about her." Lavinia felt that she could dispense with much of the worry her womanly concern for his comfort had given her, and she turned with a new joy to the books he was constantly recommending.