rd to
the list of names you sent me for the wedding, really, Carl,
I do not see how I can possibly accommodate so many of your
friends without seriously curtailing my own list. After all
you must remember that it is the bride's day, not the
groom's. And in regard to your question as to whether we
expect to be home for Christmas and could I possibly arrange
to spend Christmas Day with you--why, Carl, you are
perfectly preposterous! Of course it is very kind of you to
invite me and all that, but how could mother and I possibly
come to your rooms when our engagement is not even
announced? And besides there is going to be a very smart
dance here Christmas Eve that I particularly wish to attend.
And there are plenty of Christmases coming for you and me.

"Cordially yours,

"CORNELIA.

"P. S. Mother and I hope that your rheumatism is much
better."

"That's the girl who loves me," said Stanton not unhumorously. Then
suddenly all the muscles around his mouth tightened like the facial
muscles of a man who is hammering something. "I mean it!" he insisted.
"I mean it--absolutely. That's the--girl--who--loves--me!"

Silently the two men looked at each other for a second. Then they
both burst out laughing.

"Oh, yes," said Stanton at last, "I know it's funny. That's just the
trouble with it. It's altogether too funny."

Out of a book on the table beside him he drew the thin gray and
crimson circular of The Serial-Letter Co. and handed it to the Doctor.
Then after a moment's rummaging around on the floor beside him, he
produced with some difficulty a long, pasteboard box fairly bulging
with papers and things.

"These are the--communications from my make-believe girl," he
confessed grinningly. "Oh, of course they're not all letters," he
hurried to explain. "Here's a book on South America.--I'm a rubber
broker, you know, and of course I've always been keen enough about the
New England end of my job, but I've never thought anything so very
special about the South American end of it. But that girl--that
make-believe girl, I mean--insists that I ought to know all about
South America, so she sent me this book; and it's corking reading,
too--all about funny things like eating monkeys and parrots and
toasted guinea-pigs--and sleeping outdoors in black jungle-nights
under mosquito netting, mind you, as a protection against prowling
panthers.--And