A Generous Letter

"I've dreamed about it nights," she said. "I've thought about it days,
and tried so hard to be reconciled; to feel that if God will have it
so, I am willing to die before you have ever called me your little
wife, or I have ever called you husband. Heaven is better than earth,
I know, and I am sure of going there, I think, but oh, dear Guy, a
life with you looks so very sweet, that sometimes your little Lucy
shrinks from the dark grave, which would hide her forever from you.
Guy, you once said you never prayed, and it made me feel so badly, but
you will, when you get this, won't you? You will ask God to make me
well, and may be He will hear you. Do, Guy, please do pray for your
Lucy, far away over the sea."

Guy could not resist that touching appeal, "to pray for his little
Lucy," and though his lips were all unused to prayer, bowing his head
upon his hands he did ask that she might live, beseeching the Father
to send upon him any calamity save this one--Lucy must be spared. Guy
felt better for having prayed, it was something to tell Lucy,
something that would please her well, and though his heart yet was
very sad, a part of the load was lifted, and he could think of Lucy
now without the bitter pain her letter first had cost him. Was there
nothing that would save her, nobody who could cure her? Her disease
was not hereditary; surely it might be made to yield; had English
physicians no skill, would not an American do better? It was possible,
and if that mother of Lucy's would let her come where doctors knew
something, she might get well; but she wouldn't; she was determined
that no husband should be burdened with an ailing wife, and so if the
mountain would not come to Mahomet, why, Mahomet must go to the
mountain, and Guy fairly leaped from his chair as he exclaimed: "I
have it--Doc!--he's the most skillful man I ever knew; I'll send him
to England; send him to the Atherstones; he shall go to Naples with
them as their family physician; he can cure Lucy; I'll speak to him
the very next time he comes here;" and with another burden lifted from
his mind, Guy began to wonder where Maddy was, and why that day had
been so long.