she
was thinking while she sang.

But part of the time she was wondering what mail she would get. Her chum
would write, of course; being a good, faithful chum, she would probably
continue to write two or three letters a week for the next three months.
After that she would drop to one long letter a month for awhile; and
after that--well, she was a faithful chum, but life persists in bearing
one past the eddy that holds friendship circling round and round in a
pool of memories. The chum's brother had written twice, however;
exuberant letters full of current comedy and full-blooded cheerfulness
and safely vague sentiment which he had partly felt at the time he wrote.
He had "joshed" Helen May a good deal about the goats, even to the extent
of addressing her as "Dear Goat-Lady" in the last letter, with the word
"Lady" underscored and scrawled the whole width of the page. Helen May
had puzzled over the obscure meaning of that, and had decided that it
would have sounded funny, perhaps, if he had said it that way, but that
it "didn't get over" on paper.

She wondered if he would write again, or if his correspondence would
prove as spasmodic, as easily interrupted as his attentions had been when
they were both in the same town. Chum's brother was a nice, big, comfy
kind of young man; the trouble was that he was too popular to give all
his interest to one girl. You know how it is when a man stands six feet
tall and has wavy hair and a misleading smile and a great, big,
deep-cushioned roadster built for two. Helen May appreciated his writing
two letters to her, he who hated so to write letters, but her faith in
the future was small. Still, he might write. It seemed worth while to
wait for the stage.

Just when she was telling herself that the stage was late, far over the
ridge rose the dust signal. Her pulse quickened expectantly; so much had
loneliness done for her. She watched it, and she tried not to admit to
herself that it did not look like the cloud kicked up by the four
trotting stage horses. She tried not to believe that the cloud was much
too small to have been made by their clattering progress. It must be the
stage. It was past time for it to arrive at the post. And it had not gone
by, for she had sent for a can of baking powder and a dozen lemons and
fifty cents worth of canned milk (the delicatessen habit of buying in
small quantities still hampered her) and, even if the stage had passed
earlier than usual, the st