She gathered the sheets together and
pressed them to her face as though they were flowers, or the hands of
little children.
"I've got to tell him--to-night," she whispered to herself, in the
dusky, small, dismantled room. "I've got to get him to see it as I do. I
must make myself worthy of him before I let him take me for his own."
She thrust the letters into the breast-pocket of her coat and ran
downstairs. Mavity Bence stood in the hall, plainly awaiting her.
"Honey," she began fondly, "I've been putting away Pap's things
to-day--jest like you oncet found me putting away Lou's. I came on this
here." And then Johnnie noticed a folded bandanna in her hands.
"You-all asked me to let ye go through and find that nickel ore, and ye
brung it out in a pasteboard box; but this here is what it was in on the
day your Uncle Pros fetched hit here, and I thought maybe you'd take a
interest in having the handkercher that your fortune come down the
mountains in."
"Yes, indeed, Aunt Mavity," said Johnnie, taking the bandanna into her
own hands.
"Pap, he's gone," the poor woman went on tremulously, "an' the evil what
he done--or wanted to do--is a thing that I reckon you can afford to
forget. You're a mighty happy woman, Johnnie Consadine; the Lord knows
you deserve to be."
She stood looking after the girl as she went out into the twilit street.
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