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needs to be lonely in order to write. Wasn't that it, Sister Eliza?"

"Yes, that was it. But she was so sweet. She said she was so afraid we'd think she was ungrateful, or didn't love us enough, but it was just that she loved us all too much and was too happy with us, that it kept her from what she feels is the work she must do."

"She does look on it as a true vocation. Thee knows I was unalterably opposed to the notion at first. We all were, weren't we? And what poor Fred and Amy will do without her I can't imagine. But I'm beginning to think perhaps we ought to let her go."

"What does thee think, Johnnie?"

"I've always thought writing could be done wherever there was a pen and ink and paper, if you had something to say," Uncle Johnnie answered.

Aunt Susannah looked at him and closed her eyes. "Talbot Emery Towne promises to keep an eye on her," she said. "And thee told me thy friend's daughter had rooms in a house