Please get well—­fast—­fast—­fast.  I want to have you close by where I can touch you and make sure you are tangible.  Such a little half hour we had together!  I’m afraid maybe I dreamed it.  If I were only a member of your family (a very distant fourth cousin) then I could come and visit you every day, and read aloud and plump up your pillow and smooth out those two little wrinkles in your forehead and make the corners of your mouth turn up in a nice cheerful smile.  But you are cheerful again, aren’t you?  You were yesterday before I left.  The doctor said I must be a good nurse, that you looked ten years younger.  I hope that being in love doesn’t make every one ten years younger.  Will you still care for me, darling, if I turn out to be only eleven?

Yesterday was the most wonderful day that could ever happen.  If I live to be ninety-nine I shall never forget the tiniest detail.  The girl that left Lock Willow at dawn was a very different person from the one who came back at night.  Mrs. Semple called me at half-past four.  I started wide awake in the darkness and the first thought that popped into my head was, `I am going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!’ I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring.  The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise.  I knew something was going to happen.  All the way in the train the rails kept singing, `You’re going to see Daddy-Long-Legs.’  It made me feel secure.  I had such faith in Daddy’s ability to set things right.  And I knew that somewhere another man—­dearer than Daddy—­ was wanting to see me, and somehow I had a feeling that before the journey ended I should meet him, too.  And you see!

When I came to the house on Madison Avenue it looked so big and brown and forbidding that I didn’t dare go in, so I walked around the block to get up my courage.  But I needn’t have been a bit afraid; your butler is such a nice, fatherly old man that he made me feel at home at once. `Is this Miss Abbott?’ he said to me, and I said, `Yes,’ so I didn’t have to ask for Mr. Smith after all.  He told me to wait in the drawing-room.  It was a very sombre, magnificent, man’s sort of room.  I sat down on the edge of a big upholstered chair and kept saying to myself: 

`I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!  I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!’

Then presently the man came back and asked me please to step up to the library.  I was so excited that really and truly my feet would hardly take me up.  Outside the door he turned and whispered, `He’s been very ill, Miss.  This is the first day he’s been allowed to sit up.  You’ll not stay long enough to excite him?’ I knew from the way he said it that he loved you—­an I think he’s an old dear!