"Caleb never read Ivanhoe," Nehemiah said.
"Did someone read it to him?"
He opened his mouth, and shut it, and something moved behind his eyes.
"Go on," he said again, more quietly.
In March he had asked her if she would consider coming out in the summer, when the roads were good and she could see the place before she decided anything. He had been clear about that. You must see it first, he had written. You must not marry a letter. And then, in a different paragraph, as if he had come back to the page after a long time away from it: I have not got the words for what I mean and I am using somebody else's to say it, which is maybe not fair. But I mean it.
"I thought that was a figure of speech," Linnet said. "I thought he meant he was borrowing words from books."
The last letter written before the twenty-second of April was dated the sixteenth. It was cheerful. Calving had gone well. The creek was up. He had bought a mare from a man in Rock Creek and was going to call her Pennsylvania if Linnet didn't object, Penny for short. He said he would write again directly after the spring branding.
The next letter was dated the eleventh of May.
"Nearly three weeks after," Nehemiah said. His voice had gone rough.