Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/329

fancied, that they shrank a little from his aimless sleeve. By imperceptible degrees, vague thoughts began to form and float in Joe's mind, akin to thoughts which floated in Mrs, Bennet's before she wrote her letter; not tangible enough to be stated, or to be matter of distinct consciousness, never going further in words than "who knows;" but all the while drawing Joe slowly, surely toward Provincetown. He had thought that he would take a journey to Iowa before the winter set in, and see his aunt and his cousins and his married sister there; but gradually he fell into the way of thinking about a journey to the East first. Now, to suppose from all this that Joe had a romantic sentiment toward the unknown Matilda Bennet would be quite wrong. He had nothing of the kind. He had merely a vague but growing impulse to go and see, as he phrased it, "what she was like." As week after week passed and he received no reply to his letter, this impulse increased. He had thought Mrs. Bennet would write again; she seemed to Joe to wield rather a glib pen; he had supposed he should have an active correspondence "with the old lady," as he always called her in his own mind but no letter came. Mrs. Bennet builded better than she knew, when she left Joe to himself so many weeks. His letter had given her great satisfaction. She read it aloud to Tilly and to her husband, and consoled herself by her partial defeat in her argument with Tilly by saying: "Well, he