means the only importunate subscriber."

"Oh, Thunder!" growled Stanton. The idea seemed to be new to him and
not altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his face began to brighten.
"No, I'm lying," he said. "No, they haven't always sent me a printed
slip. It was only yesterday that they sent me a rather real sort of
letter. You see," he explained, "I got pretty mad at last and I wrote
them frankly and told them that I didn't give a darn who 'Molly' was,
but simply wanted to know _what_ she was. I told them that it was just
gratitude on my part, the most formal, impersonal sort of gratitude--a
perfectly plausible desire to say 'thank you' to some one who had
been awfully decent to me these past few weeks. I said right out that
if 'she' was a boy, why we'd surely have to go fishing together in the
spring, and if 'she' was an old man, the very least I could do would
be to endow her with tobacco, and if 'she' was an old lady, why I'd
simply be obliged to drop in now and then of a rainy evening and hold
her knitting for her."

"And if 'she' were a girl?" probed the Doctor.

Stanton's mouth began to twitch. "Then Heaven help me!" he laughed.

"Well, what answer did you get?" persisted the Doctor. "What do you
call a realish sort of letter?"

With palpable reluctance Stanton drew a gray envelope out of the cuff
of his wrapper.

"I suppose you might as well see the whole business," he admitted
consciously.

There was no special diffidence in the Doctor's manner this time. His
clutch on the letter was distinctly inquisitive, and he read out the
opening sentences with almost rhetorical effect.

"Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do you persist in
hectoring me so? Don't you understand that I've got only a
certain amount of ingenuity anyway, and if you force me to
use it all in trying to conceal my identity from you, how
much shall I possibly have left to devise schemes for your
amusement? Why do you persist, for instance, in wanting to
see my face? Maybe I haven't got any face! Maybe I lost my
face in a railroad accident. How do you suppose it would
make me feel, then, to have you keep teasing and
teasing.--Oh, Carl!

"Isn't it enough for me just to tell you once for all that
there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever
meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe,
biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am