"Claire darling—
"Almost two weeks since I wrote to you. Will you love me any more?
"As I write I am all alone on the edge of a very little pool of light reflected from my little lamp that was only intended to see me into bed and not to burn half the night through while I write to my pal.
"Is this summer night as perfect where you are, Claire? (Tush—you've probably been playing tennis and dancing and flirting until you are too exhausted to care about anything except the breakfast bell disturbing you.) But up here it's wonderful! The sky is blue-black velvet, all studded with stars that seem suspended—they are so very close. And the air just caresses you! And there are the sweetest smells, grassy and earthy and all fragrant of roses. There are queer little noises, too—as though the night was full of fairy creatures. And I heard a whip-or-will! And a screech-owl, way, way off.
"Since I wrote to you last I have 'put my foot in it' again! Terribly! It's too long a story to write to you—there isn't nearly oil enough for that—but I skated over the thin ice and reached safety—in other words, I am still here! And, Nancy, I know, now, even Aunt Sabrina is beginning to like me! Do you know why? Because I lost my head and told her what I thought was the matter with her and Happy House and I don't suppose anyone dared to tell her that before. (I called her Leavitt traditions tommy-rot.) And I think she enjoyed the sensation! Anyway, she seems to treat me now like Somebody and she said something the other day about how lovely the autumns were on the Island, as though she took it for granted I'd be here then!
"Claire, what if I can never get away? Did I dream, when I took Anne's shoes (to speak in figures) and put them on, where they'd lead me? And sometimes I think that I will not see the end of the trail for a long time. I'm not crazy to see it, either, for it must end in Disaster!
"I am beginning to understand these people, too. I—in my usual way, judged them too quickly! One must know their history to know them—know what a splendid background they have. Aunt Sabrina has taken up Ezekiel where she left off and tells me stories about the Champlain Valley. Of course, I know she is doing it, because I called the Leavitt glories 'tommy-rot' and when I read, in B'lindy's book (gotten up, of course, to bait tourists) what these Islanders have done, I feel cheap and small and insignificant beside all these people who have such heroic grandfathers and great grandfathers.
"I suppose, all over the world, Island people must be different from people whose lands lie directly contingent with other lands and people. The very waters that shut away these precious Hero Islands wash their lives back upon themselves—they live in—they can't help it. The world that rushes on so fast for us, living in the big cities, scarcely stirs them here! These folks talk about Ethan Allen and Remembrance Baker as though it was only yesterday they walked down under the elms of the village street! They all eat off from very old china and sit in very old chairs—precious because some hero dear to the Island has sat in them!
"(All of this is not original with me—The Hired Man said it.)
"So just as I finished grandly saying to Aunt Sabrina that it didn't matter at all what the people, who are dead and gone, have done, I'm beginning to see—like a picture opened before my eyes—that it does matter—quite a little! They, these dead and gone people, leave us what they have done; if it's bad, we have to pay for it, some way or other—if it's noble, we have to be worthy of it! That philosophy is all mine and not the Hired Man's.