I used to make believe the letters came from Helena, or Butte, because that was where she heard from him last.

He was always promising to come home--in the letters.

That used to make her so much better," she explained naively.

"And sometimes she'd be able to go out in the yard and fuss with her flowers, after one like that.

But he never came, and so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift.