(Original Publication Date, 20 August 1991)
Panel 1: Gordon recaps yesterday's strip when he tells Mike that Martha really loves him but didn't write him because she cannot write as well as he can.
Panel 2: Mike is right for the wrong reasons when he says that's crazy. His prose style is where crinkum meets crankum so she would have to a fruitcake to be impressed by it. Instead of saying that outright, Gord says "I know but that's what she said. She feels awful."
Wheat this means to me is that Martha has finally passed a test because she feels like shit for 'hurting' Mike.
Panel 3: This suspicion of mine is confirmed when an aghast Mike gets on his bike and says that he shouldn't have made a big deal of things because it was only a letter. Gordon asks where he's going.
Panel 4: We see the confused back of Gord's head when Mike says "To apologize."
Summary: Like I said, this is what Mike has been waiting for from her: his knowing that she feels bad about the way she treats him. He's also waiting for Liz to admit that she should never have tried to steal attention away from him and she only did so because she's a bad person.