ell you?

"I mustn't waste too much time, though, on this nonsense.
What I really wanted to say to you was: Here are four--not
'sleeping potions', but waking potions--just four silly
little bits of news for you to think about at one o'clock,
and two, and three--and four, if you happen to be so
miserable to-night as to be awake even then.

"With my love,

"MOLLY."

Whimsically, Stanton rummaged around in the creases of the bed-spread
and extricated the little folded paper marked, "No. 1 o'clock." The
news in it was utterly brief.

"My hair is red," was all that it announced.

With a sniff of amusement Stanton collapsed again into his pillows.
For almost an hour then he lay considering solemnly whether a
red-headed girl could possibly be pretty. By two o'clock he had
finally visualized quite a striking, Juno-esque type of beauty with a
figure about the regal height of Cornelia's, and blue eyes perhaps
just a trifle hazier and more mischievous.

But the little folded paper marked, "No. 2 o'clock," announced
destructively: "My eyes are brown. And I am _very_ little."

With an absurdly resolute intention to "play the game" every bit as
genuinely as Miss Serial-Letter Co. was playing it, Stanton refrained
quite heroically from opening the third dose of news until at least
two big, resonant city clocks had insisted that the hour was ripe. By
that time the grin in his face was almost bright enough of itself to
illuminate any ordinary page.

"I am lame," confided the third message somewhat depressingly. Then
snugglingly in parenthesis like the tickle of lips against his ear
whispered the one phrase: "My picture is in the fourth paper,--if you
should happen still to be awake at four o'clock."

Where now was Stanton's boasted sense of honor concerning the ethics
of playing the game according to directions? "Wait a whole hour to see
what Molly looked like? Well he guessed not!" Fumbling frantically
under his pillow and across the medicine stand he began to search for
the missing "No. 4 o'clock." Quite out of breath, at last he
discovered it lying on the floor a whole arm's length away from the
bed. Only with a really acute stab of pain did he finally succeed in
reaching it. Then with fingers fairly trembling with effort, he
opened forth and disclosed a tiny snap-shot photograph of a
grim-jawed, scrawny-necked, much be-spectacled elderly dame with a
huge gray pompadour.

[Illus