uthful of cracked ice. By
night the sob in his thirsty throat was like a lump of salt and snow.
But nothing outdoors or in, from morning till night, was half as
wretchedly cold and clammy as the rapidly congealing hot-water bottle
that slopped and gurgled between his aching shoulders.

It was just after supper when a messenger boy blurted in from the
frigid hall with a great gust of cold and a long pasteboard box and a
letter.

Frowning with perplexity Stanton's clumsy fingers finally dislodged
from the box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an astonishingly
strange, blurry pattern of green and red against a somber background
of rusty black. With increasing amazement he picked up the
accompanying letter and scanned it hastily.

"Dear Lad," the letter began quite intimately. But it was not signed
"Cornelia". It was signed "Molly"!

II

Turning nervously back to the box's wrapping-paper Stanton read once
more the perfectly plain, perfectly unmistakable name and
address,--his own, repeated in absolute duplicate on the envelope.
Quicker than his mental comprehension mere physical embarrassment
began to flush across his cheek-bones. Then suddenly the whole truth
dawned on him: The first installment of his Serial-Love-Letter had
arrived.

"But I thought--thought it would be type-written," he stammered
miserably to himself. "I thought it would be a--be a--hectographed
kind of a thing. Why, hang it all, it's a real letter! And when I
doubled my check and called for a special edition de luxe--I wasn't
sitting up on my hind legs begging for real presents!"

But "Dear Lad" persisted the pleasant, round, almost childish
handwriting:

"DEAR LAD,

"I could have _cried_ yesterday when I got your letter
telling me how sick you were. Yes!--But crying wouldn't
'comfy' you any, would it? So just to send you
right-off-quick something to prove that I'm thinking of you,
here's a great, rollicking woolly wrapper to keep you snug
and warm this very night. I wonder if it would interest you
any at all to know that it is made out of a most larksome
Outlaw up on my grandfather's sweet-meadowed farm,--a
really, truly Black Sheep that I've raised all my own
sweaters and mittens on for the past five years. Only it
takes two whole seasons to raise a blanket-wrapper, so
please be awfully much delighted with it. And oh, Mr. Sick
Boy, when you look at the funny, bl