on, Bill. This story sure sounds different from most."

"It ain't even started to get different yet," said Bill gloomily.
"Well, that letter made me so plumb mad that I sat down and wrote
everything I could think of that a gent would say to a girl to let her
know what I thought about her. And what d'you think happened?"

"She wrote you back the prettiest letter you ever seen," suggested
Ronicky, "saying as how she'd never meant to make you mad and that if
you--"

"Say," broke in Bill Gregg, "did I show that letter to you?"

"Nope; I just was guessing at what a lot of women would do. You see?"

"No, I don't. I could never figure them as close as that. Anyway
that's the thing she done, right enough. She writes me a letter that
was smooth as oil and suggests that I go on with a composition course
to learn how to write."

"Going to have you do books, Bill?"

"I ain't a plumb fool, Ronicky. But I thought it wouldn't do me no
harm to unlimber my pen and fire out a few words a day. So I done it.
I started writing what they told me to write about, the things that
was around me, with a lot of lessons about how you can't use the same
word twice on one page, and how terrible bad it is to use too many
passive verbs."

"What's a passive verb, Bill?"

"I didn't never figure it out, exactly. However, it seems like they're
something that slows you up the way a muddy road slows up a hoss.
And then she begun talking about the mountains, and then she begun
asking--

"About you!" suggested Ronicky with a grin.

"Confound you," said Bill Gregg. "How come you guessed that?"

"I dunno. I just sort of scented what was coming."

"Well, anyways, that's what she done. And pretty soon she sent me a
snapshot of herself. Well--"

"Lemme see it," said Ronicky Doone calmly.

"I dunno just where it is, maybe," replied Bill Gregg.

"Ill tell you. It's right around your neck, in that nugget locket you
wear there."

For a moment Bill Gregg hated the other with his eyes, and then he
submitted with a sheepish grin, took off the locket, which was made of
one big nugget rudely beaten into shape, and opened it for the benefit
of Ronicky Doone. It showed the latter not a beautiful face, but a
pretty one with a touch of honesty and pride that made her charming.

"Well, as soon as I got that picture," said Bill Gregg, as he took
back the locket, "I sure got excited. Looked to me like that girl was
made for me. A lot finer than I could ever