no furniture in his house but a loveseat and a footstool and a photograph in a frame!
When the party got back to Round Hill a few days later, Sally found the letter written by old Buck Meriweather. It had been waiting for a week or more and had not been forwarded. And so it happened that after he was dead, the old man spoke to Sally:
"Will you forgive one who is going very soon into a far country for writing as I am going to write? Sometimes we who are about to cross the border see things clearly. That is my only apology for what may seem to you an unwarrantable intrusion. I want Merry to be happy, and I have a feeling that you hold his happiness in your hands. Perhaps I haven't any right to say this. Perhaps it isn't true. But wrong or right, I wish that you would trust life for more than it will give you in the marriage you are contemplating. Won't you?
"That is all I have to say. To put it more definitely into words would be to confuse myself as well as you. I think you know what I mean. Shall we let it rest there, and again, will you forgive me?"
A strange letter, but one that stirred Sally's heart. "Won't you trust life for more than it will give you . . . ?" Wasn't he in effect asking her not to marry Neale?
How absurd! Why, the wedding was less than three weeks away! And her clothes were all made. Caterers were baking cakes, and florists planning decorations. Presents were pouring in. Even now Hildegarde was downstairs posting things in a note-book—the cosmetic boxes of old Irish silver which had come that
