r for them that I do so, because I am naturally so truthful
that I shall not force you to look for my meaning between the
lines. On the contrary, I shall set the cold facts out as neatly
as the pickets on the fence. And in evidence thereof, I open the
ball by telling you frankly that they both look fierce. If they
had looked less awful, and Burnett had had more lime in his bones,
we might have escaped the Powers That Be by simply admitting a
sprained ankle and carefully concealing everything else. But if
one man cracks where you can't finish the deal, even by the most
unlimited outlay of mucilage and persistence, and another blazes
his whole surface-area in a manner that seems to make the
underbrush dubious to count on forever henceforth; why, you then
have a logarithm the square of which is probably as far beyond
your depth as I am beyond my own just at this point of this
sentence.

The long and short of my fresh start is, that your brother wants
to write you, but he is so handicapped (forgive me, but you're the
only one who hasn't had that joke sprung on them!) with bandages,
that it's cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his
bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend
as we see him these days you wouldn't be sure whether it was true
or not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode,
was not in it the same day with your brother's friend! I do assure
you. And anyhow--even if he still has brains--his writing apparatus
is all done up in arnica, so there you are!

But do not allow me to alarm you unduly! When all's said and done,
they're not so badly off physically. Hair and ribs are mere
vanities, anyhow, and we're here to-day and gone to-morrow!

Something much worse than disfigurements and broken bones has
sprung forth from chaos, and has almost stared them out of
countenance since. It is the wolf that is at the door, and the
howling and prowling of their particular wolf is not to be sneezed
at, let me tell you. To put a modern political face upon an
ancient Greek fable, the wolf in their case symbolizes the bitter
question of whose roof is going to roof them when they get out of
the plaster casts that are bed and board to them just at present.
Where are they to go? All those which used to be open to them are
suddenly sh