Just now I feel like taking a little rest." Cora smiled at him.

"I wish you would.

You look like a starved cat--you ought'o let us feed you up for a while." "Spoil me for the trail," he said, but his eyes conveyed a message of gratitude for her sympathy, and she flushed again.
After supper Mrs.Reynolds said: "Now if you want to read your letters by yourself, you can." She opened a door and he looked in.
"A bed! I haven't slept in a bed for two years." "Well, it won't kill ye, not for one night, I reckon," she said.
He looked around the little room, at the dainty lace curtains tied with little bows of ribbon, at the pictures and lambrequins, and it filled his heart with a sudden stress of longing.

It made him remember the pretty parlor in which Mary had received him four years before, and he opened her letter with a tremor in his hands.

It was dated the Christmas day of the year of his visit; it was more than three years belated, but he read it as if it were written the day before, and it moved him quite as powerfully.
"MY DEAR FRIEND: The impulse to write to you has grown stronger day by day since you left.