And back in her room again, Reba buried the envelope bearing the title of Mrs. Cawthorne deep in her trunk along with the postcards, and the gold ring, and the bit of currant-cake in the borrowed wedding-cake box, and sat down and wrote to Nathan on her pale blue note-paper.
She had written to him punctually every month since he had left her. A pack of her blue envelopes awaited him in San Francisco. Reba's letters were neat little models of propriety. Even her early notes to her seaman husband, when she had felt such gratitude and appreciation, were stilted and impersonal. Reba had never been taught how to set her thoughts free on paper. The note she wrote in answer to Nathan's letter made scant reference to his intimate thoughts of her. It was in a brief postscript after she had signed her name as usual, "So good-by. Rebecca," that she suggested that they keep their marriage a secret, not only from the world, but from themselves, until they were a little better acquainted—that is, if he thought well of it. It seemed so funny, she said, to be called Mrs. Cawthorne by him, when nobody knew anything about it around here.
It was in December when Reba wrote the note telling Nathan of her return to Boston and adding the shy suggestion at the end. All winter no message of any sort came from him. It was early spring when finally a postcard announced the safe though, owing to various mishaps, the delayed arrival of the "Ellen T. Robinson" in San Francisco.
The postcard was followed a week later by a reply to Reba's postscript. Nathaniel Cawthorne, sensitive to the slightest suggestion from the delicate creature
