She had now reached a stage
when the minor refinements of behaviour disappear. Her excuse remained
uninvented, but she had the subject of her letter clear in her mind,
even to the hint that "circumstances in my life have changed very
greatly since we talked together." But she never gave that hint. There
came a third letter from that fitful correspondent Fanny. The first line
proclaimed her "the happiest girl alive."

Miss Winchelsea crushed the letter in her hand--the rest unread--and
sat with her face suddenly very still. She had received it just before
morning school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians were
well under way. Presently she resumed reading with an appearance of
great calm. But after the first sheet she went on reading the third
without discovering the error:--"told him frankly I did not like
his name," the third sheet began. "He told me he did not like it
himself--you know that sort of sudden frank way he has"--Miss Winchelsea
did know. "So I said 'Couldn't you change it?' He didn't see it at
first. Well, you know, dear, he had told me what it really meant; it
means Sevenoaks, only it has got down to Snooks--both Snooks and Noaks,
dreadfully vulgar surnames though they be, are really worn forms of
Sevenoaks. So I said--even I have my bright ideas at times--'if it
got down from Sevenoaks to Snooks, why not get it back from Snooks
to Sevenoaks?' And the long and the short of it is, dear, he couldn't
refuse me, and he changed his spelling there and then to Senoks for the
bills of the new lecture. And afterwards, when we are married, we shall
put in the apostrophe and make it Se'noks. Wasn't it kind of him to mind
that fancy of mine, when many men would have taken offence? But it is
just like him all over; he is as kind as he is clever. Because he knew
as well as I did that I would have had him in spite of it, had he been
ten times Snooks. But he did it all the same."

The class was startled by the sound of paper being viciously torn, and
looked up to see Miss Winchelsea white in the face, and with some very
small pieces of paper clenched in one hand. For a few seconds they
stared at her stare, and then her expression changed back to a more
familiar one. "Has any one finished number three?" she asked in an even
tone. She remained calm after that. But impositions ruled high that day.
And she spent two laborious evenings writing letters of various sorts
to Fanny, before she found a decent congra