Elizabeth, running down the steps to meet the postman, saw a familiar imprint on the corner of an envelope, and drew it from the pack before the good-natured man could hand it to her. "Guess you don't want no Philadelphia letter?" he said slyly. "Of course I don't!" she retorted; and the trudging postman smiled for a whole block because of the light in her face. In the house, the letter in her hand, she stopped to hug Miss White. "Cherry-pie! the letter has come. I'm to be married on my birthday!" "Oh, my lamb," said Cherry-pie, "however shall I get things ready in time!" Elizabeth did not wait to help her in her housekeeping anxieties. She fled singing up to her room. "Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, joyful, Oh, that will be joyful, To meet to part no more!" Then she opened the letter.... She read the last lines with unseeing eyes; the first lines were branding themselves into her soul. She folded the brief sheet with deliberation, and slowly put it back into the envelope. Then the color began to fall out of her face. Her eyes smoldered, glowed, then suddenly blazed: "He is sorry I am tired waiting." Something warm, like a lifting tide of heat, was rising just below her breast-bone; it rose, and rose, and surged, until she gasped, and cried out hoarsely: "If 'I think it over,' I'll be 'ashamed,' will I? 'Couldn't respect himself? What about me respecting myself?" And the intolerable wave of heat still rose, swelling and bursting until it choked her; she was strangling! She clutched at her throat, then flung out clenched hands. "He 'can't let' me marry him? It's 'a long time for _me_ to wait'! I must 'make up my mind to it'! I hate him--I want to kill him--I want to tear him! What did I tell him? 'to come and take me'? And he doesn't want me! And Nannie knows I told him to come, and Miss White and Uncle know it. And they will know he didn't want me. Oh, how could I have told him I wanted him? I must kill him. I must kill myself--" Her wild outpouring of words was without sense or meaning to her. She shuddered violently, something crimson seemed to spread before her eyes, but the pallor of her face was ghastly. She began to pace up and down the room. Once she unfolded the letter, and glancing again at those moderate words, laughed loudly. "'His,'" she said, "I told him I was 'his'? I must have been out of my head. Well, I'll 'think it over!' I'll 'think it over!'--he needn't worry about that. Oh, I could kill myself! And I told Cherry-pie I was going to be--" she could not speak the word. She stood still and gasped for breath.