m Maudie Chapman."

26 ALVERTON STREET,

PIMLICO.

Dear old Jenny,

Suddenly remembered it was your birthday, old girl. Many Happy
Returns of The Day, and hope you're in the best of pink and going
on fine the same as I am. We have got a new stage manager who you
would laugh to see all the girls think. We have been rehearsing for
months and I'm sick of it--You're well out of the Orient I give you
my word. Its a dogs' Island now and no mistake. Walter sends his
love. I have got a little girl called Ivy. She is a love. Have you?

With heaps of love

from your old chum, Maudie.

Irene's gone off with that fellow Danbie and Elsie had twins. Her
Artie was very annoyed about it. Madge Wilson has got a most
glorious set of furs. No more from Maudie--Write us a letter old
girl.

* * * * *

"Fancy," said Jenny. "Elsie Crauford's had twins."

This letter, read in the open air, with a sea wind traveling through the
apple trees, with three hundred miles of country between the sender and
the receiver, was charged with London sorcery. It must have been posted
on the way to the theater. Incredible thought! Jenny visualized the red
pillar-box into which it might have slipped, a pillar-box station by a
crowded corner, splashed by traffic and jostled by the town. On the flap
was a round spot of London rain, and pervading all the paper was a faint
theater scent. The very ink was like eye-black, and Maudie must have
written every word laboriously between two glittering ballets.

"I wonder if I could do a single beat now?" said Jenny. "I wish I hadn't
given my new ballet shoes to Gladys West."

Then as once she danced under the tall plane tree of Hagworth Street to
a sugared melody of "Cavalleria," so now she danced in an apple orchard,
keeping time to the wind and the waving boughs. Young Frank quivered and
kicked with joy to see the twirling of his mother's skirts. May cried,
"You great tomboy!" but with robin's eyes and slanting head watched her
sister.

Had she been a poet, Jenny would have sung of London, of the thunder and
grayness, of the lamps and rain, of long irresistible rides on the top
of swaying tramcars, of wild roars through the depth of the earth past
the green lamps flashing to red. She danced instead about the sea-girt
orchard-close all that once her heart had found in London. She danced
the hopes