"What have you to do with me ?" The man looked surprised.
"Didn't you send word to me to meet you here ?" "No!" answered Rachel, "and I consider it very presumptuous in you to write such a letter to me." "I didn't write you a letter," said the negro, astonished.
"Then what made you come here ?" demanded the spinster.
"Because you wrote to me." "I wrote to you!" exclaimed Rachel, aghast.
"Yes, you wrote to me to come here.

You said you'd wear a blue ribbon on your neck, and I was to have a rose pinned to my coat." Rachel was bewildered.
"How could I write to you when I never saw you before, and don't know your name.

Do you think a lady like me would marry a colored man ?" "Who said anything about that ?" asked the other, opening his eyes wide in astonishment.

"I couldn't marry, nohow, for I've got a wife and four children." Rachel felt ready to collapse.

Was it possible that she had made a mistake, and that this was not her unknown correspondent, Daniel?
"There is some mistake," she said, nervously.