n his, and, oh, my! Miss Alice turned up her nose when she saw
it. It did look smudgy.

Sid hurriedly scrubbed it with his handkerchief, but even that didn't
really make it clean, and by that time you couldn't read the address.
Alice didn't ask me if I'd read it, or I'd have told her.

There was a fuss afterward in the family, but I kept clear of it. I
wouldn't have time to get through what I have to do if I attended to
their fusses, so all I knew was that it had something to do with that
letter. All the family were taking trains, like a procession, for two or
three days. I don't know why, so Lorraine can't expect me to write that
down.

There's only one other event of great signification that I know about,
and nobody knows that except me and Dr. Denbigh and Peggy. It was this
way. The doctor saw me on the street one afternoon--I can't remember
what day it was--and stopped his machine and motioned to me to get in.
You bet I got. He shook hands with me just the way he would with father,
and not as if I were a contemptible puppy.

"Billy, my son, I want you to do something for me," he said.

"All right," said I.

"I've got to see Peggy," he went on. "I've got to!" And he looked as
fierce as a circus tiger. "I can't sit still and not lift a finger
and let this wretched business go on. I won't lose her for any silly
scruples."

I didn't know what he was driving at, but I said, "I wouldn't, either,"
in a sympathetic manner.

"I've got to see her!" he fired at me again.

"Yep," I said. "She's up at the house now. Come on." But that didn't
suit him. He explained that she wouldn't look at him when the others
were around, and that she slid off and wormed out of his way, so he
couldn't get at her, anyhow. Just like a girl, wasn't it--not to face
the music? Well, anyway, he'd cooked up a plan that he wanted me to do,
and I promised I would. He wanted me to get Peggy to go up the river to
their former spooning-resort (only he put it differently), and he would
be there waiting and make Peggy talk to him, which he seemed to desire
more than honey in the honeycomb.

Lovers are a strange animal. I may be foolish, but I prefer toads. With
them you can tie a string around the hind leg, and you have got them.
But with lovers it's all this way one day and upside down the next, and
wondering what's hurt the feelings of her, and if he's got tired of
you, and polyandering around to get interviews up rivers when you could
easier s