I mean to be good to her, if I can," and Mrs.Markham's sun-bonnet was bent low over Richard's letter, on which there were traces of tears when the head was lifted up again.

"I must let John know, I never can stand it till dinner time," she said, and a shrill blast from the tin horn, used to bring her sons to dinner, went echoing across the prairie to the lot where John was working.
It was not a single blast, but peal upon peal, a loud, prolonged sound, which startled John greatly, especially as he knew by the sun that it could not be twelve o'clock.
"Blows as if somebody was in a fit," he said, as he took long and rapid strides toward the farmhouse.
His mother met him in the lane, letter in hand, and her face white with excitement as she said below her breath: "John, John, oh! John, she's come.

She's there at Richard's--sick with the fever, and crazy; and Richard is so glad.

Read what he says." She did not say who had come, but John knew, and his eyes were dim with tears as he took the letter from his mother's hand, and read it, walking beside her to the house.
"I presume they doctor her that silly fashion, with little pills the size of a small pin head.

Melinda is so set in her way.