She hesitated for a few minutes, listening to the soft low sobs overhead, but her sense of judicious forestalling of the future prevailed over her sympathy with the troubled girl.
"Phebe'll be very lonesome," she wrote, and old Marlowe looked sadly into her face with his sunken eyes.

There was no need to nod assent to her words.
"I've been like a mother to her," wrote Mrs.Nixey, and she rubbed both the sentences off the slate with her pocket-handkerchief, and sat pondering over the wording of her next communication.

It was difficult and embarrassing, this mode of intercourse on a subject which even she felt to be delicate.

How much easier it would have been if old Marlowe could hear and speak like other men! He watched her closely as she wrote word after word and rubbed them out again, unable to satisfy herself.

At last he stretched out his hand and seized the slate, just as she was again about to rub out the sentence.
"Our Simon'd marry her to-morrow," was written upon it.
Old Marlowe sat looking at the words without raising his eyes or making any sign.