May-Day, 1749.
"DEAR COUSIN DICK,--I think I have not been so glad in many years as when
I got your letter last Guy Fawkes Day. I was coming from the church where
the parson preached on plots and treasons, and obedience to the King,
when I saw the old postman coming down the road. I made quickly to him, I
know not why, for I had not thought to hear from you, and before I
reached him he held up his hand, showing me the stout packet which
brought me news of you. I hurried with it to the inn, and went straight
to my room and sat down by the window, where I used to watch for your
coming with the fishing fleet, down the sea from the Dogger Bank. I was
only a girl, a young girl, then, and the Dogger Bank was, to my mind, as
far off as that place you call York Factory, in Hudson's Bay, is to me
now. And yet I did not know how very far it was until our schoolmaster
showed me on a globe how few days' sail it is to the Dogger Bank, and how
many to York Factory.
"But I will tell you of my reading of your letter, and of what I thought.
But first I must go back a little. When you went away that wild, dark
night, with bitter words on your lips to me, Cousin Dick, I thought I
should never feel the same again. You did not know it, but I was bearing
the misery of your trouble and of another's also, and of my own as well;
and so I said over and over again, Oh, why will men be hard on women? Why
do they look for them to be iron like themselves, bearing double burdens
as most women do? But afterwards I settled to a quietness which I would
not have you think was happiness, for I have given up thought of that.
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