o reward his ultimate good-nature the very next mail
brought him a letter from Cornelia, and rather a remarkable letter
too, as in addition to the usual impersonal comments on the weather
and the tennis and the annual orange crop, there was actually one
whole, individual, intimate sentence that distinguished the letter as
having been intended solely for him rather than for Cornelia's
dressmaker or her coachman's invalid daughter, or her own youngest
brother. This was the sentence:

"Really, Carl, you don't know how glad I am that in spite of
all your foolish objections, I kept to my original purpose
of not announcing my engagement until after my Southern
trip. You've no idea what a big difference it makes in a
girl's good time at a great hotel like this."

This sentence surely gave Stanton a good deal of food for his day's
thoughts, but the mental indigestion that ensued was not altogether
pleasant.

Not until evening did his mood brighten again. Then--

"Lad of Mine," whispered Molly's gentler letter. "Lad of
Mine, _how blond your hair is_!--Even across the
chin-tickling tops of those yellow jonquils this morning, I
almost laughed to see the blond, blond shine of you.--Some
day I'm going to stroke that hair." (Yes!)

"P. S. The Little Dog came home all right."

With a gasp of dismay Stanton sat up abruptly in bed and tried to
revisualize every single, individual pedestrian who had passed his
window in the vicinity of eight o'clock that morning. "She evidently
isn't lame at all," he argued, "or little, or red-haired, or anything.
Probably her name isn't Molly, and presumably it isn't even
'Meredith.' But at least she did go by: And is my hair so very
blond?" he asked himself suddenly. Against all intention his mouth
began to prance a little at the corners.

As soon as he could possibly summon the janitor, he despatched his
third note to the Serial-Letter Co., but this one bore a distinctly
sealed inner envelope, directed, "For Molly. Personal." And the
message in it, though brief was utterly to the point. "Couldn't you
_please_ tell a fellow who you are?"

But by the conventional bed-time hour the next night he wished most
heartily that he had not been so inquisitive, for the only
entertainment that came to him at all was a jonquil-colored telegram
warning him--

"Where the apple reddens do not pry,
Lest we lose our Eden--you and I."

The coup