They were happy, single-hearted little gatherings. Ma was seated at the bedside in a great armchair before a table on which the letter was spread out. An additional lamp was requisitioned for the occasion, and her glasses were polished until they shone and gleamed in the yellow light. Seth was propped up, and Rube, large, silent, like a great reflective St. Bernard dog, reclined ponderously at the foot of the wooden bedstead. The reading proceeded with much halting and many corrections and rereadings, but with never an interruption from the attentive audience. The men listened to the frivolous, inconsequent gossip of the girl, now thousands of miles away from them, with a seriousness, a delighted happiness that nothing else in their lives could have afforded them. Comment came afterward, and usually from Ma, the two men merely punctuating her remarks with affirmative or negative monosyllables. It was on the receipt of one of these letters that Ma saw her way to a small scheme which had been slowly revolving itself in her brain ever since Seth was wounded. Seth had been in the habit of enclosing occasional short notes under cover of the old woman's more bulky and labored replies to the girl. Since his misadventure these, of course, had been discontinued, with the result that now, at last, Rosebud was asking for an explanation. In reading the letter aloud Ma avoided that portion of it which referred to the matter. Her reason was obviously to keep her own plans from her boy's knowledge, but so clumsily did she skip to another part of the letter, that, all unconscious of it, she drew from her audience a sharp look of inquiry. Nothing was said at the time, but the following day, at supper, when Ma and Rube were alone, the man, who had taken the whole day to consider the matter, spoke of it in the blunt fashion habitual to him. "Guess ther' was suthin' in that letter you didn't read, Ma?" he said without preamble. Ma looked up. Her bright eyes peered keenly through her spectacles into her husband's massive face. "An' if ther' was?" she said interrogatively. The old man shrugged. "Guess I was wonderin'," he said, plying his knife and fork with some show of indifference. A silence followed. Ma helped herself to more tea and refilled her husband's mug. "Guess we'll have to tell the child," she said presently. "Seems like." A longer silence followed. "She was jest askin' why Seth didn't write." "I kind o' figgered suthin' o' that natur'. You'd best tell her." Rube rested the ends of his knife and fork on the extremities of his plate and took a noisy draught from his huge mug of tea. A quiet smile lurked in the old woman's eyes. "Rosebud's mighty impulsive," she observed slowly. "Ef you mean she kind o' jumps at things, I take it that's how." The old woman nodded, and a reflection of her smile twinkled in her husband's eyes as he gazed over at the little figure opposite him.