It was this fear that drove her to shifting the furniture, to dragging out hidden treasures, and reducing the house generally to a chaotic state worse even than in the yearly whirlpool of spring-cleaning. Pushing and tugging, she performed feats of strength which she had thought beyond her, even in youth, and which sent her gasping to a chair for a few moments’ relaxation. She raced up and down stairs fetching and carrying, and then did not know what to do with things, and had to take them back again. The tide of life within her rose to its fullest height in the necessity for proving to herself that at last the longed-for miracle had been accomplished. She was standing on a chair by the dresser, measuring the pot-rail with a tape, and in constant danger of losing her balance in her efforts, when the postman’s whistle came shrilling up to her as he climbed towards the gardens. In the sudden start that it gave her she lost count of what she was doing, and, getting down rather stiffly, she went to the door to wait for him. For how many years now, she said to herself, still flushed and panting, had she listened, morning by morning, for Dick Nelson’s whistle! For how many years now had it had power to thrill her, carrying with it, as it so often did, the possibility of a Canadian letter! Even when there was no chance of such a thing it could set her heart leaping and her eyes shining. The single, climbing note of it had always been for her a call straight from the Great Beyond. So many mornings she had longed and listened, and now she could almost count on her fingers the mornings that were left! She wondered whether she would still find herself listening when she was over the water,--going to the door, perhaps, to stand waiting and watching. It would be some time, no doubt, before she would get used to doing without those constant letters. She had lived for them so long that the loss of them at first would be almost like the loss of meat and drink. She would not need them, of course, when she had the children,--so much nearer and dearer than any letter could make them!--but she would miss them, all the same. There were things people told you in letters which they never told in the flesh; things they felt for you when they wrote which they did not think of when you were by. And, once written, you had them to turn to, even if they never said them again. The very handwriting of those who loved you was in itself a loving speech....