s shake," confessed Nan. "Do open it, Momsey!"

"I, I feel that it is important, too," the little lady said.

"Well, my dear," her husband finally advised, having waited in patience,
"unless it is opened we shall never know whether your feeling is
prophetic or not. 'By the itching of my thumb,' and so forth!"

Without making any rejoinder to this, and perhaps without hearing his
gentle raillery, Mrs. Sherwood reached up to the coils of her thick hair
to secure woman's never-failing implement, a hairpin.

There were two enclosures. Both she shook into her lap. The sealed,
foreign-looking letter she picked up first. It was addressed in a
clerkly hand to,

"MISTRESS JESSIE ADAIR BLAKE,

"KINDNESS OF MESSRS. ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO.

"MEMPHIS, TENN., U.S.A."

"From England. No! From Scotland," murmured Nan, looking over her
mother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card in
the corner of the foreign envelope:

KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH

Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She looked
up suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes.

"I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake,"
she said.

"Oh, Momsey!" squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience.
"Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!"

"No-o," her mother said, with pursed lips. "No, honey. The other comes
first, I reckon."

It was a letter typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but it
was not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr.
MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexico
on business that might detain him for several weeks.

"A letter addressed by you to Mr. MacKenzie arrived after his departure
and is being held for him with other personal communications until
his return; but being assured that you are the Jessie Adair Blake, now
Sherwood--to whom the enclosed letter from Scotland is addressed, I take
the liberty of forwarding the same. The Scotch letter reached us after
Mr. MacKenzie's departure, likewise. Will you please acknowledge the
receipt of the enclosure and oblige?"

This much of the contents of the secretary's letter was of particular
interest to the Sherwoods. Momsey's voice shook a little as she finished
reading it. Plainly she was disappointed.

"Cousin Adair, I am sure, would have suggested something helpful had
he been at home," she said sadly. "It, it is a great disappointment,
Robert."

"W