Their rude meal was prepared in silence, and eaten in silence. Sim Gage felt in his pocket, and drawing out the letter he had received, smoothed out the envelope on the table top. "It's addressed to her, Wid," said he after a time, "and she ain't here." "I don't see why we oughtn't to open it and read it," said Wid. "Some one'd have to anyhow, if she was here, for she couldn't read, herself." Sim, by means of a table knife, opened the envelope. "You read it, Wid," said he. "You can read better'n I can." And so Wid accepted Sim's conventional fiction, knowing he could neither read nor write. "Dear Mary," said Anne's letter, "I got to write to you. I wisht you hadn't went away when you did and how you did, for, Mary, I feel so much alone. "You know when you started out I was joking you about Charlie Dorenwald. I told you, even if you did have an inside chance you maybe might not be married any sooner than I was. That was just a little while ago. So far as it's all concerned you can come right on back. There's nothing doing now between Charlie and I. "You know he was foreman in the factory. He ought to of had money laid up but he didn't. On Installments I'd soon have got a place fixed up, though Charlie and me was going to fix it up on Installments. But I got to talking with him, right away after you had left, it was all about the war and I said to him, 'Charlie, why didn't you go over?' He says one thing and he says another. Well you know that sort of got me started and at last we had it, and do you know when he got rattled he began to talk Dutch to me? Well, I talked turkey to him. One thing and another went on and Charlie and me we split up right there. "'I couldn't join the army noways,' he says, 'they wouldn't take me. I had flat feet.' "'You got a flat tire, that's what ails you,' I says to him, 'Well now I wouldn't marry you at all, not if you was the last man, which you look to me like you was.' "Well, the way he talked, Mary, I wouldn't be surprised if he was married already anyhow. One of the girls said he'd been living with another woman not four blocks off. He ain't hurt none and I don't know as I am neither although of course a girl feels mortified that people think she's going to get married and then she ain't. "But I'm thinking of you. I've gone back in our old room where it's cheaper and let them take back the Installment furniture. I ain't got a thing to do after hours except read the papers. The country's all stirred up. But anyhow I'm rid of my Dutch patriot. That's why I'm writing to you now. "I wonder what you're doing out there. Are you married yet? What did he look like, Mary? I know he's a good man after all, kind and chivalrous like he said. If he wasn't you'd be wiring me telling me when you was coming home. I guess you're too happy to write to anybody like me. You'll have a Home of your own.