[Illustration: The so-called delicious, intangible joke]

 Molly

 Make-Believe

 By

 Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

 With Illustrations by

 Walter Tittle

 New York

 The Century Co. 

 1911

 Copyright, 1910, by

 THE CENTURY CO. 

 * * * * *

TO

MY SILENT PARTNER

 * * * * *

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The so-called delicious, intangible joke _Frontispiece_

"Good enough!" he chuckled

Every girl like Cornelia had to go South sometime between November andMarch

An elderly dame

A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceedinglyobstreperous fox-terrier

"Well I'll be hanged, " growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be strung byany boy!"

Some poor old worn-out story-writer

"Maybe she is--'colored, '" he volunteered at last

"Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered

"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair

Cornelia's mother answered this time

He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the cover backward onthe floor

"Are you a good boy?" she asked

"It's only Carl, " he said

 * * * * *

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

I

The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it--a dingywhirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadowblack as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernousroom, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. 

Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead ofa human being Carl Stanton lay and cursed the brutal Northern winter. 

Between his sturdy, restive shoulders the rheumatism snarled andclawed like some utterly frenzied animal trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw itsway out. Along the tortured hollow of his back a red-hot plaster fumedand mulled and sucked at the pain like a hideously poisoned fangtrying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its way in. Worse than this; every four orfive minutes an agony as miserably comic as a crashing blow on one'scrazy bone went jarring and shuddering through his whole abnormallyvibrant system. 

In Stanton's swollen fingers Cornelia's large, crisp letter rustlednot softly like a lady's skirts but bleakly as an ice-storm inDecember woods. 

Cornelia's whole angular handwriting, in fact, was not at all unlike athicket of twigs stripped from root to branch of every possiblesoftening leaf. 

 "DEAR CARL" crackled the letter, "In spite of your unpleasant tantrum yesterday, because I would not kiss you good-by in the presence of my mother, I am good-natured enough you see to write you a good-by letter after all. But I certainly will not promise to write you daily, so kindly do not tease me any more about it. In the first place, you understand that I greatly dislike letter-writing. In the second place you know Jacksonville quite as well as I do, so there is no use whatsoever in wasting either my time or yours in purely geographical descriptions. And in the third place, you ought to be bright enough to comprehend by this time just what I think about 'love-letters' anyway. I have told you once that I love you, and that ought to be enough. People like myself do not change. I may not talk quite as much as other people, but when I once say a thing I mean it! You will never have cause, I assure you, to worry about my fidelity. 

 "I will honestly try to write you every Sunday these next six weeks, but I am not willing to literally promise even that. Mother indeed thinks that we ought not to write very much at all until our engagement is formally announced. 

 "Trusting that your rheumatism is very much better this morning, I am

 "Hastily yours, "CORNELIA. 

 "P. S. Apropos of your sentimental passion for letters, I enclose a ridiculous circular which was handed to me yesterday at the Woman's Exchange. You had better investigate it. It seems to be rather your kind. "

As the letter fluttered out of his hand Stanton closed his eyes with atwitch of physical suffering. Then he picked up the letter again andscrutinized it very carefully from the severe silver monogram to thehuge gothic signature, but he could not find one single thing that hewas looking for;--not a nourishing paragraph; not a stimulatingsentence; not even so much as one small sweet-flavored word that wasworth filching out of the prosy text to tuck away in the pockets ofhis mind for his memory to munch on in its hungry hours. Now everybodywho knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a businessletter does not deserve the paper which it is written on unless itcontains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up inthe night to remember and think about. And as to the Lover who doesnot write significant phrases--Heaven help the young mate who findshimself thus mismated to so spiritually commonplace a nature! Baffled, perplexed, strangely uneasy, Stanton lay and studied the barren pagebefore him. Then suddenly his poor heart puckered up like a persimmonwith the ghastly, grim shock which a man experiences when he realizesfor the first time that the woman whom he loves is not shy, but--_stingy_. 

With snow and gloom and pain and loneliness the rest of the daydragged by. Hour after hour, helpless, hopeless, utterly impotent asthough Time itself were bleeding to death, the minutes bubbled anddripped from the old wooden clock. By noon the room was as murky asdish-water, and Stanton lay and fretted in the messy, sudsysnow-light like a forgotten knife or spoon until the janitor wanderedcasually in about three o'clock and wrung a piercing little wisp offlame out of the electric-light bulb over the sick man's head, andraised him clumsily out of his soggy pillows and fed him indolentlywith a sad, thin soup. Worst of all, four times in the dreadfulinterim between breakfast and supper the postman's thrilly footstepssoared up the long metallic stairway like an ecstatically toweringhigh-note, only to flat off discordantly at Stanton's door withouteven so much as a one-cent advertisement issuing from theletter-slide. --And there would be thirty or forty more days just likethis the doctor had assured him; and Cornelia had said that--perhaps, if she felt like it--she would write--six--times. 

Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, andsmutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then thewindow-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outsideworld. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all exceptthat particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems torip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and exposeall the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a grittyblanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally highnight-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirstlike the scrape of hot sand-paper; and chill like the clammy horror ofraw fish. Then, just as the mawkish cold, gray dawn came nosing overthe house-tops, and the poor fellow's mind had reached the point wherethe slam of a window or the ripping creak of a floorboard would haveshattered his brittle nerves into a thousand cursing tortures--thenthat teasing, tantalizing little friend of all rheumatic invalids--theMorning Nap--came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped outof his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of painwhich he had been accumulating so laboriously all night long topresent to the Doctor as an incontestable argument in favor of anopiate. 

Whiter than his rumpled bed, but freshened and brightened anddeceptively free from pain, he woke at last to find the pleasantyellow sunshine mottling his dingy carpet like a tortoise-shell cat. Instinctively with his first yawny return to consciousness he reachedback under his pillow for Cornelia's letter. 

Out of the stiff envelope fluttered instead the tiny circular to whichCornelia had referred so scathingly. 

It was a dainty bit of gray Japanese tissue with the crimson-inkedtext glowing gaily across it. Something in the whole color scheme andthe riotously quirky typography suggested at once the audaciouslyoriginal work of some young art student who was fairly splashing herway along the road to financial independence, if not to fame. And thisis what the little circular said, flushing redder and redder andredder with each ingenuous statement:

 THE SERIAL-LETTER COMPANY. 

 Comfort and entertainment Furnished for Invalids, Travelers, and all Lonely People. 

 Real Letters

 from

 Imaginary Persons. 

 Reliable as your Daily Paper. Fanciful as your Favorite Story Magazine. Personal as a Message from your Best Friend. Offering all the Satisfaction of _receiving_ Letters with no Possible Obligation or even Opportunity of Answering Them. 

SAMPLE LIST. 

Letters from a Japanese Fairy. (Especially acceptable Bi-weekly. To a Sick Child. Fragrant with Incense and Sandal Wood. Vivid with purple and orange and scarlet. Lavishly interspersed with the most adorable Japanese toys that you ever saw in your life. )

Letters from a little Son. (Very sturdy. Very Weekly. Spunky. Slightly profane. )

Letters from a Little Daughter. (Quaint. Old-Fashioned. Weekly. Daintily Dreamy. Mostly about Dolls. )

Letters from a Banda-Sea Pirate. (Luxuriantly tropical. Monthly. Salter than the Sea. Sharper than Coral. Unmitigatedly murderous. Altogether blood-curdling. )

Letters from a Gray-Plush Squirrel. (Sure to please Nature Irregular. Lovers of Either Sex. Pungent with wood-lore. Prowly. Scampery. Deliciously wild. Apt to be just a little bit messy perhaps with roots and leaves and nuts. )

Letters from Your Favorite (Biographically consistent. Historical Character. Historically reasonable. Fortnightly. Most vivaciously human. Really unique. )

Love Letters. (Three grades: Shy. Daily. Medium. Very Intense. )

 In ordering letters kindly state approximate age, prevalent tastes, --and in case of invalidism, the presumable severity of illness. For price list, etc. , refer to opposite page. Address all communications to Serial Letter Co. Box, etc. , etc. 

As Stanton finished reading the last solemn business detail hecrumpled up the circular into a little gray wad, and pressed his blondhead back into the pillows and grinned and grinned. 

"Good enough!" he chuckled. "If Cornelia won't write to me there seemto be lots of other congenial souls who will--cannibals and rodentsand kiddies. All the same--" he ruminated suddenly: "All the same I'llwager that there's an awfully decent little brain working away behindall that red ink and nonsense. "

Still grinning he conjured up the vision of some grim-facedspinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at lastfor the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance, rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously humanSaturday night crowd at the village post-office--herself the onlyperson whose expected letter never failed to come! From Squirrel orPirate or Hopping Hottentot--what did it matter to her? Just theenvelope alone was worth the price of the subscription. How thepink-cheeked high school girls elbowed each other to get a peep at thepost-mark! How the--. Better still, perhaps some hopelessly unpopularman in a dingy city office would go running up the last steps just alittle, wee bit faster--say the second and fourth Mondays in themonth--because of even a bought, made-up letter from Mary Queen ofScots that he knew absolutely without slip or blunder would bewaiting there for him on his dusty, ink-stained desk among all thelitter of bills and invoices concerning--shoe leather. Whether 'MaryQueen of Scots' prattled pertly of ancient English politics, orwhimpered piteously about dull-colored modern fashions--what did itmatter so long as the letter came, and smelled of fadedfleur-de-lis--or of Darnley's tobacco smoke? Altogether pleased by thevividness of both these pictures Stanton turned quite amiably to hisbreakfast and gulped down a lukewarm bowl of milk without half hisusual complaint. 

[Illustration: "Good enough!" he chuckled]

It was almost noon before his troubles commenced again. Then like araging hot tide, the pain began in the soft, fleshy soles of his feetand mounted up inch by inch through the calves of his legs, throughhis aching thighs, through his tortured back, through his cringingneck, till the whole reeking misery seemed to foam and froth in hisbrain in an utter frenzy of furious resentment. Again the day draggedby with maddening monotony and loneliness. Again the clock mocked him, and the postman shirked him, and the janitor forgot him. Again thebig, black night came crowding down and stung him and smothered himinto a countless number of new torments. 

Again the treacherous Morning Nap wiped out all traces of the pain andleft the doctor still mercilessly obdurate on the subject of anopiate. 

And Cornelia did not write. 

Not till the fifth day did a brief little Southern note arriveinforming him of the ordinary vital truths concerning a comfortablejourney, and expressing a chaste hope that he would not forget her. Not even surprise, not even curiosity, tempted Stanton to wade twicethrough the fashionable, angular handwriting. Dully impersonal, bleakas the shadow of a brown leaf across a block of gray granite, plainly--unforgivably--written with ink and ink only, the stupid, loveless page slipped through his fingers to the floor. 

After the long waiting and the fretful impatience of the past few daysthere were only two plausible ways in which to treat such a letter. One way was with anger. One way was with amusement. With conscientiouseffort Stanton finally summoned a real smile to his lips. 

Stretching out perilously from his snug bed he gathered thewaste-basket into his arms and commenced to dig in it like a sportiveterrier. After a messy minute or two he successfully excavated thecrumpled little gray tissue circular and smoothed it out carefully onhis humped-up knees. The expression in his eyes all the time wasquite a curious mixture of mischief and malice and rheumatism. 

"After all" he reasoned, out of one corner of his mouth, "After all, perhaps I have misjudged Cornelia. Maybe it's only that she reallydoesn't know just what a love-letter OUGHT to be like. "

Then with a slobbering fountain-pen and a few exclamations heproceeded to write out a rather large check and a very small note. 

 "TO THE SERIAL-LETTER CO. " he addressed himself brazenly. "For the enclosed check--which you will notice doubles the amount of your advertised price--kindly enter my name for a six weeks' special 'edition de luxe' subscription to one of your love-letter serials. (Any old ardor that comes most convenient) Approximate age of victim: 32. Business status: rubber broker. Prevalent tastes: To be able to sit up and eat and drink and smoke and go to the office the way other fellows do. Nature of illness: The meanest kind of rheumatism. Kindly deliver said letters as early and often as possible!

 "Very truly yours, etc. "

Sorrowfully then for a moment he studied the depleted balance in hischeck-book. "Of course" he argued, not unguiltily, "Of course thatcheck was just the amount that I was planning to spend on aturquoise-studded belt for Cornelia's birthday; but if Cornelia'sbrains really need more adorning than does her body--if this specialinvestment, in fact, will mean more to both of us in the long run thana dozen turquoise belts--. "

Big and bland and blond and beautiful, Cornelia's physical personalityloomed up suddenly in his memory--so big, in fact, so bland, so blond, so splendidly beautiful, that he realized abruptly with a strangelittle tucked feeling in his heart that the question of Cornelia's"brains" had never yet occurred to him. Pushing the thoughtimpatiently aside he sank back luxuriantly again into his pillows, andgrinned without any perceptible effort at all as he planned adroitlyhow he would paste the Serial Love Letters one by one into thegaudiest looking scrap-book that he could find and present it toCornelia on her birthday as a text-book for the "newly engaged" girl. And he hoped and prayed with all his heart that every individualletter would be printed with crimson ink on a violet-scented page andwould fairly reek from date to signature with all the joyous, ecstaticsilliness that graces either an old-fashioned novel or a modernbreach-of-promise suit. 

So, quite worn out at last with all this unwonted excitement, hedrowsed off to sleep for as long as ten minutes and dreamed that hewas a--bigamist. 

The next day and the next night were stale and mean and musty with adrizzling winter rain. But the following morning crashedinconsiderately into the world's limp face like a snowball spiked withicicles. Gasping for breath and crunching for foothold the sidewalkpeople breasted the gritty cold. Puckered with chills and goose-flesh, the fireside people huddled and sneezed around their respectivehearths. Shivering like the ague between his cotton-flannel blankets, Stanton's courage fairly raced the mercury in its downward course. Bynoon his teeth were chattering like a mouthful of cracked ice. Bynight the sob in his thirsty throat was like a lump of salt and snow. But nothing outdoors or in, from morning till night, was half aswretchedly cold and clammy as the rapidly congealing hot-water bottlethat slopped and gurgled between his aching shoulders. 

It was just after supper when a messenger boy blurted in from thefrigid hall with a great gust of cold and a long pasteboard box and aletter. 

Frowning with perplexity Stanton's clumsy fingers finally dislodgedfrom the box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an astonishinglystrange, blurry pattern of green and red against a somber backgroundof rusty black. With increasing amazement he picked up theaccompanying letter and scanned it hastily. 

"Dear Lad, " the letter began quite intimately. But it was not signed"Cornelia". It was signed "Molly"!

II

Turning nervously back to the box's wrapping-paper Stanton read oncemore the perfectly plain, perfectly unmistakable name andaddress, --his own, repeated in absolute duplicate on the envelope. Quicker than his mental comprehension mere physical embarrassmentbegan to flush across his cheek-bones. Then suddenly the whole truthdawned on him: The first installment of his Serial-Love-Letter hadarrived. 

"But I thought--thought it would be type-written, " he stammeredmiserably to himself. "I thought it would be a--be a--hectographedkind of a thing. Why, hang it all, it's a real letter! And when Idoubled my check and called for a special edition de luxe--I wasn'tsitting up on my hind legs begging for real presents!"

But "Dear Lad" persisted the pleasant, round, almost childishhandwriting:

 "DEAR LAD, "I could have _cried_ yesterday when I got your letter telling me how sick you were. Yes!--But crying wouldn't 'comfy' you any, would it? So just to send you right-off-quick something to prove that I'm thinking of you, here's a great, rollicking woolly wrapper to keep you snug and warm this very night. I wonder if it would interest you any at all to know that it is made out of a most larksome Outlaw up on my grandfather's sweet-meadowed farm, --a really, truly Black Sheep that I've raised all my own sweaters and mittens on for the past five years. Only it takes two whole seasons to raise a blanket-wrapper, so please be awfully much delighted with it. And oh, Mr. Sick Boy, when you look at the funny, blurry colors, couldn't you just please pretend that the tinge of green is the flavor of pleasant pastures, and that the streak of red is the Cardinal Flower that blazed along the edge of the noisy brook?

 "Goodby till to-morrow, "MOLLY. "

With a face so altogether crowded with astonishment that there was noroom left in it for pain, Stanton's lame fingers reached outinquisitively and patted the warm, woolly fabric. 

"Nice old Lamb--y" he acknowledged judicially. 

Then suddenly around the corners of his under lip a little balky smilebegan to flicker. 

"Of course I'll save the letter for Cornelia, " he protested, "but noone could really expect me to paste such a scrumptious blanket-wrapperinto a scrap-book. "

Laboriously wriggling his thinness and his coldness into the blacksheep's luxuriant, irresponsible fleece, a bulging side-pocket in thewrapper bruised his hip. Reaching down very temperishly to the pockethe drew forth a small lace-trimmed handkerchief knotted pudgily acrossa brimming handful of fir-balsam needles. Like a scorching hot Augustbreeze the magic, woodsy fragrance crinkled through his nostrils. 

"These people certainly know how to play the game all right, " hereasoned whimsically, noting even the consistent little letter "M"embroidered in one corner of the handkerchief. 

Then, because he was really very sick and really very tired, hesnuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheekto the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child withits nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught. But the cup did not fill. --Yet scented deep in his curved, empty, balsam-scented fingers lurked--somehow--somewhere--the dregs of awonderful dream: Boyhood, with the hot, sweet flutter of summer woods, and the pillowing warmth of the soft, sunbaked earth, and the crackleof a twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone of a bee, and thegreat blue, blue mystery of the sky glinting down through agreen-latticed canopy overhead. 

For the first time in a whole, cruel tortuous week he actually smiledhis way into his morning nap. 

When he woke again both the sun and the Doctor were staring pleasantlyinto his face. 

"You look better!" said the Doctor. "And more than that you don't lookhalf so 'cussed cross'. "

"Sure, " grinned Stanton, with all the deceptive, undauntable optimismof the Just-Awakened. 

"Nevertheless, " continued the Doctor more soberly, "there ought to besomebody a trifle more interested in you than the janitor to lookafter your food and your medicine and all that. I'm going to send youa nurse. "

"Oh, no!" gasped Stanton. "I don't need one! And frankly--I can'tafford one. " Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the doctor's frank stare. "You see, " he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to bemarried--and though business is fairly good and all that--my beingaway from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuceinto my commissions--and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall--andthere seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practicallyfine you for buying them, and--"

The Doctor's face brightened irrelevantly. "Is she a Boston younglady?" he queried. 

"Oh, yes, " beamed Stanton. 

"Good!" said the Doctor. "Then of course she can keep some sort of aneye on you. I'd like to see her. I'd like to talk with her--give herjust a few general directions as it were. "

A flush deeper than any mere love-embarrassment spread suddenly overStanton's face. 

"She isn't here, " he acknowledged with barely analyzablemortification. "She's just gone south. "

"_Just_ gone south?" repeated the Doctor. "You don't mean--sinceyou've been sick?"

Stanton nodded with a rather wobbly grin, and the Doctor changed thesubject abruptly, and busied himself quickly with the leastbad-tasting medicine that he could concoct. 

Then left alone once more with a short breakfast and a long morning, Stanton sank back gradually into a depression infinitely deeper thanhis pillows, in which he seemed to realize with bitter contrition thatin some strange, unintentional manner his purely innocent, matter-of-fact statement that Cornelia "had just gone south" hadassumed the gigantic disloyalty of a public proclamation that the ladyof his choice was not quite up to the accepted standard of feminineintelligence or affections, though to save his life he could notrecall any single glum word or gloomy gesture that could possibly haveconveyed any such erroneous impression to the Doctor. 

[Illustration: Every girl like Cornelia had to go South sometimebetween November and March]

"Why Cornelia _had_ to go South, " he reasoned conscientiously. "Everygirl like Cornelia _had_ to go South sometime between November andMarch. How could any mere man even hope to keep rare, choice, exquisite creatures like that cooped up in a slushy, snowy NewEngland city--when all the bright, gorgeous, rose-blooming Southwas waiting for them with open arms? 'Open arms'! Apparently it wasonly 'climates' that were allowed any such privileges with girls likeCornelia. Yet, after all, wasn't it just exactly that very quality ofserene, dignified aloofness that had attracted him first to Corneliaamong the score of freer-mannered girls of his acquaintance?"

Glumly reverting to his morning paper, he began to read and rereadwith dogged persistence each item of politics and foreign news--eachgibbering advertisement. 

At noon the postman dropped some kind of a message through the slit inthe door, but the plainly discernible green one-cent stamp forbade anypossible hope that it was a letter from the South. At four o'clockagain someone thrust an offensive pink gas bill through theletter-slide. At six o'clock Stanton stubbornly shut his eyes upperfectly tight and muffled his ears in the pillow so that he wouldnot even know whether the postman came or not. The only thing thatfinally roused him to plain, grown-up sense again was the joggle ofthe janitor's foot kicking mercilessly against the bed. 

"Here's your supper, " growled the janitor. 

On the bare tin tray, tucked in between the cup of gruel and the sliceof toast loomed an envelope--a real, rather fat-looking envelope. Instantly from Stanton's mind vanished every conceivable sad thoughtconcerning Cornelia. With his heart thumping like the heart of anylove-sick school girl, he reached out and grabbed what he supposed wasCornelia's letter. 

But it was post-marked, "Boston"; and the handwriting was quiteplainly the handwriting of The Serial-Letter Co. 

Muttering an exclamation that was not altogether pretty he threw theletter as far as he could throw it out into the middle of the floor, and turning back to his supper began to crunch his toast furiouslylike a dragon crunching bones. 

At nine o'clock he was still awake. At ten o'clock he was still awake. At eleven o'clock he was still awake. At twelve o'clock he was stillawake. . . . At one o'clock he was almost crazy. By quarter past one, asthough fairly hypnotized, his eyes began to rivet themselves on thelittle bright spot in the rug where the "serial-letter" lay gleamingwhitely in a beam of electric light from the street. Finally, in onesupreme, childish impulse of petulant curiosity, he scrambledshiveringly out of his blankets with many "O--h's" and "O-u-c-h-'s, "recaptured the letter, and took it growlingly back to his warm bed. 

Worn out quite as much with the grinding monotony of his rheumaticpains as with their actual acuteness, the new discomfort of straininghis eyes under the feeble rays of his night-light seemed almost apleasant diversion. 

The envelope was certainly fat. As he ripped it open, three or fourfolded papers like sleeping-powders, all duly numbered, "1 A. M. , " "2A. M. , " "3 A. M. , " "4 A. M. " fell out of it. With increasinginquisitiveness he drew forth the letter itself. 

"Dear Honey, " said the letter quite boldly. Absurd as it was, thephrase crinkled Stanton's heart just the merest trifle. 

 "DEAR HONEY:

 "There are so many things about your sickness that worry me. Yes there are! I worry about your pain. I worry about the horrid food that you're probably getting. I worry about the coldness of your room. But most of anything in the world I worry about your _sleeplessness_. Of course you _don't_ sleep! That's the trouble with rheumatism. It's such an old Night-Nagger. Now do you know what I'm going to do to you? I'm going to evolve myself into a sort of a Rheumatic Nights Entertainment--for the sole and explicit purpose of trying to while away some of your long, dark hours. Because if you've simply _got_ to stay awake all night long and think--you might just as well be thinking about ME, Carl Stanton. What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood--and the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here--now, I say--this very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and swear--if you're honestly able to--that you can't smell the rose in my hair! A cinnamon rose, would you say--a yellow, flat-faced cinnamon rose? Not quite so lusciously fragrant as those in your grandmother's July garden? A trifle paler? Perceptibly cooler? Something forced into blossom, perhaps, behind brittle glass, under barren winter moonshine? And yet--A-h-h! Hear me laugh! You didn't really mean to let yourself lift the page and smell it, did you? But what did I tell you?

 "I mustn't waste too much time, though, on this nonsense. What I really wanted to say to you was: Here are four--not 'sleeping potions', but waking potions--just four silly little bits of news for you to think about at one o'clock, and two, and three--and four, if you happen to be so miserable to-night as to be awake even then. 

 "With my love, "MOLLY. "

Whimsically, Stanton rummaged around in the creases of the bed-spreadand extricated the little folded paper marked, "No. 1 o'clock. " Thenews in it was utterly brief. 

"My hair is red, " was all that it announced. 

With a sniff of amusement Stanton collapsed again into his pillows. For almost an hour then he lay considering solemnly whether ared-headed girl could possibly be pretty. By two o'clock he hadfinally visualized quite a striking, Juno-esque type of beauty with afigure about the regal height of Cornelia's, and blue eyes perhapsjust a trifle hazier and more mischievous. 

But the little folded paper marked, "No. 2 o'clock, " announceddestructively: "My eyes are brown. And I am _very_ little. "

With an absurdly resolute intention to "play the game" every bit asgenuinely as Miss Serial-Letter Co. Was playing it, Stanton refrainedquite heroically from opening the third dose of news until at leasttwo big, resonant city clocks had insisted that the hour was ripe. Bythat time the grin in his face was almost bright enough of itself toilluminate any ordinary page. 

"I am lame, " confided the third message somewhat depressingly. Thensnugglingly in parenthesis like the tickle of lips against his earwhispered the one phrase: "My picture is in the fourth paper, --if youshould happen still to be awake at four o'clock. "

Where now was Stanton's boasted sense of honor concerning the ethicsof playing the game according to directions? "Wait a whole hour to seewhat Molly looked like? Well he guessed not!" Fumbling franticallyunder his pillow and across the medicine stand he began to search forthe missing "No. 4 o'clock. " Quite out of breath, at last hediscovered it lying on the floor a whole arm's length away from thebed. Only with a really acute stab of pain did he finally succeed inreaching it. Then with fingers fairly trembling with effort, heopened forth and disclosed a tiny snap-shot photograph of agrim-jawed, scrawny-necked, much be-spectacled elderly dame with ahuge gray pompadour. 

[Illustration: An elderly dame]

"Stung!" said Stanton. 

Rheumatism or anger, or something, buzzed in his heart like a bee therest of the night. 

Fortunately in the very first mail the next morning a postal-card camefrom Cornelia--such a pretty postal-card too, with a bright-coloredpicture of an inordinately "riggy" looking ostrich staring over a neatwire fence at an eager group of unmistakably Northern tourists. Underneath the picture was written in Cornelia's own precious hand theheart-thrilling information:

"We went to see the Ostrich Farm yesterday. It was really veryinteresting. C. "

III

For quite a long time Stanton lay and considered the matter judiciallyfrom every possible point of view. "It would have been ratherpleasant, " he mused "to know who 'we' were. " Almost childishly hisface cuddled into the pillow. "She might at least have told me thename of the ostrich!" he smiled grimly. 

Thus quite utterly denied any nourishing Cornelia-flavored food forhis thoughts, his hungry mind reverted very naturally to thetantalizing, evasive, sweetly spicy fragrance of the 'Molly'episode--before the really dreadful photograph of the unhappyspinster-lady had burst upon his blinking vision. 

Scowlingly he picked up the picture and stared and stared at it. Certainly it was grim. But even from its grimness emanated the samefaint, mysterious odor of cinnamon roses that lurked in theaccompanying letter. "There's some dreadful mistake somewhere, " heinsisted. Then suddenly he began to laugh, and reaching out once morefor pen and paper, inscribed his second letter and his first complaintto the Serial-Letter Co. 

"To the Serial-Letter Co. , " he wrote sternly, with many ferocioustremors of dignity and rheumatism. 

 "Kindly allow me to call attention to the fact that in my recent order of the 18th inst. , the specifications distinctly stated 'love-letters', and _not_ any correspondence whatsoever, --no matter how exhilarating from either a 'Gray-Plush Squirrel' or a 'Banda Sea Pirate' as evidenced by enclosed photograph which I am hereby returning. Please refund money at once or forward me without delay a consistent photograph of a 'special edition de luxe' girl. 

 "Very truly yours. "

The letter was mailed by the janitor long before noon. Even as late aseleven o'clock that night Stanton was still hopefully expecting ananswer. Nor was he altogether disappointed. Just before midnight amessenger boy appeared with a fair-sized manilla envelope, quite stiffand important looking. 

 "Oh, please, Sir, " said the enclosed letter, "Oh, please, Sir, we cannot refund your subscription money because--we have spent it. But if you will only be patient, we feel quite certain that you will be altogether satisfied in the long run with the material offered you. As for the photograph recently forwarded to you, kindly accept our apologies for a very clumsy mistake made here in the office. Do any of these other types suit you better? Kindly mark selection and return all pictures at your earliest convenience. "

Before the messenger boy's astonished interest Stanton spread out onthe bed all around him a dozen soft sepia-colored photographs of adozen different girls. Stately in satin, or simple in gingham, ordeliciously hoydenish in fishing-clothes, they challenged hissurprised attention. Blonde, brunette, tall, short, posing withwistful tenderness in the flickering glow of an open fire, or smilingfrankly out of a purely conventional vignette--they one and all defiedhim to choose between them. 

"Oh! Oh!" laughed Stanton to himself. "Am I to try and separate herpicture from eleven pictures of her friends! So that's the game, isit? Well, I guess not! Does she think I'm going to risk choosing atom-boy girl if the gentle little creature with the pansies is reallyherself? Or suppose she truly is the enchanting little tom-boy, wouldshe probably write me any more nice funny letters if I solemnlyselected her sentimental, moony-looking friend at the heavily drapedwindow?"

Craftily he returned all the pictures unmarked to the envelope, andchanging the address hurried the messenger boy off to remail it. Justthis little note, hastily scribbled in pencil went with the envelope:

 "DEAR SERIAL-LETTER CO. :

 "The pictures are not altogether satisfactory. It isn't a 'type' that I am looking for, but a definite likeness of 'Molly' herself. Kindly rectify the mistake without further delay! or REFUND THE MONEY. "

Almost all the rest of the night he amused himself chuckling to thinkhow the terrible threat about refunding the money would confuse andconquer the extravagant little Art Student. 

But it was his own hands that did the nervous trembling when he openedthe big express package that arrived the next evening, just as histiresome porridge supper was finished. 

 "Ah, Sweetheart--" said the dainty note tucked inside the package--"Ah, Sweetheart, the little god of love be praised for one true lover--Yourself! So it is a picture of _me_ that you want? The _real me_! The _truly me_! No mere pink and white likeness? No actual proof even of 'seared and yellow age'? No curly-haired, coquettish attractiveness that the shampoo-lady and the photograph-man trapped me into for that one single second? No deceptive profile of the best side of my face--and I, perhaps, blind in the other eye? Not even a fair, honest, every-day portrait of my father's and mother's composite features--but a picture of _myself_! Hooray for you! A picture, then, not of my physiognomy, but of my _personality_. Very well, sir. Here is the portrait--true to the life--in this great, clumsy, conglomerate package of articles that represent--perhaps--not even so much the prosy, literal things that I am, as the much more illuminating and significant things that _I would like to be_. It's what we would 'like to be' that really tells most about us, isn't it, Carl Stanton? The brown that I have to wear talks loudly enough, for instance, about the color of my complexion, but the forbidden pink that I most crave whispers infinitely more intimately concerning the color of my spirit. And as to my Face--_am I really obliged to have a face_? Oh, no--o! 'Songs without words' are surely the only songs in the world that are packed to the last lilting note with utterly limitless meanings. So in these 'letters without faces' I cast myself quite serenely upon the mercy of your imagination. 

 "What's that you say? That I've simply _got_ to have a face? Oh, darn!--well, do your worst. Conjure up for me then, here and now, any sort of features whatsoever that please your fancy. Only, Man of Mine, just remember this in your imaginings: Gift me with Beauty if you like, or gift me with Brains, but do not make the crude masculine mistake of gifting me with both. Thought furrows faces you know, and after Adolescence only Inanity retains its heavenly smoothness. Beauty even at its worst is a gorgeously perfect, flower-sprinkled lawn over which the most ordinary, every-day errands of life cannot cross without scarring. And brains at their best are only a ploughed field teeming always and forever with the worries of incalculable harvests. Make me a little pretty, if you like, and a little wise, but not too much of either, if you value the verities of your Vision. There! I say: do your worst! Make me that face, and that face only, that you _need the most_ in all this big, lonesome world: food for your heart, or fragrance for your nostrils. Only, one face or another--I insist upon having _red hair_!

 "MOLLY. "

With his lower lip twisted oddly under the bite of his strong whiteteeth, Stanton began to unwrap the various packages that comprised thelarge bundle. If it was a "portrait" it certainly represented apuzzle-picture. 

First there was a small, flat-footed scarlet slipper with a fluffygold toe to it. Definitely feminine. Definitely small. So much forthat! Then there was a sling-shot, ferociously stubby, and ratherconfusingly boyish. After that, round and flat and tantalizing as anempty plate, the phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar song--"TheSea Gull's Cry": a clue surely to neither age nor sex, but indicativepossibly of musical preference or mere individual temperament. Afterthat, a tiny geographical globe, with Kipling's phrase--

 "For to admire an' for to see, For to be'old this world so wide-- It never done no good to me, But I can't drop it if I tried!"--

written slantingly in very black ink across both hemispheres. Then anempty purse--with a hole in it; a silver-embroidered gauntlet such ashorsemen wear on the Mexican frontier; a white table-doily partlyembroidered with silky blue forget-me-nots--the threaded needle stilljabbed in the work--and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fatand formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny blackdomino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt pictureframe inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of acertain portion of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians:

 "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not a Sense of Humor, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of Prophecy--and all knowledge--so that I could remove Mountains, and have not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my Goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not a Sense of Humor it profiteth me nothing. 

 "A sense of Humor suffereth long, and is kind. A Sense of Humor envieth not. A Sense of Humor vaunteth not itself--is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself Unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil--Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. A Sense of Humor never faileth. But whether there be unpleasant prophecies they shall fail, whether there be scolding tongues they shall cease, whether there be unfortunate knowledge it shall vanish away. When I was a fault-finding child I spake as a fault-finding child, I understood as a fault-finding child, --but when I became a woman I put away fault-finding things. 

 "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three. _But the greatest of these is a sense of humor!_"

With a little chuckle of amusement not altogether devoid of a verydefinite consciousness of being _teased_, Stanton spread all thearticles out on the bed-spread before him and tried to piece themtogether like the fragments of any other jig-saw puzzle. Was the younglady as intellectual as the Robert Browning poems suggested, or didshe mean simply to imply that she _wished_ she were? And did thetom-boyish sling-shot fit by any possible chance with the dainty, feminine scrap of domestic embroidery? And was the empty pursesupposed to be especially significant of an inordinate fondness forphonograph music--or what?

Pondering, puzzling, fretting, fussing, he dozed off to sleep at lastbefore he even knew that it was almost morning. And when he finallywoke again he found the Doctor laughing at him because he lay holdinga scarlet slipper in his hand. 

IV

The next night, very, very late, in a furious riot of wind and snowand sleet, a clerk from the drug-store just around the corner appearedwith a perfectly huge hot-water bottle fairly sizzling and bubblingwith warmth and relief for aching rheumatic backs. 

"Well, where in thunder--?" groaned Stanton out of his cold and painand misery. 

"Search me!" said the drug clerk. "The order and the money for it camein the last mail this evening. 'Kindly deliver largest-sized hot-waterbottle, boiling hot, to Mr. Carl Stanton, . . . 11. 30 to-night. '"

"OO-w!" gasped Stanton. "O-u-c-h! G-e-e!" then, "Oh, I wish I couldpurr!" as he settled cautiously back at last to toast his painsagainst the blessed, scorching heat. "Most girls, " he reasoned withsurprising interest, "would have sent ice cold violets shrouded intissue paper. Now, how does this special girl know--Oh, Ouch! O-u-c-h!O-u-c-h--i--t--y!" he crooned himself to sleep. 

The next night just at supper-time a much-freckled messenger-boyappeared dragging an exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier on the endof a dangerously frayed leash. Planting himself firmly on the rug inthe middle of the room, with the faintest gleam of saucy pink tongueshowing between his teeth, the little beast sat and defied the entiresituation. Nothing apparently but the correspondence concerning thesituation was actually transferable from the freckled messenger boy toStanton himself. 

 "Oh, dear Lad, " said the tiny note, "I forgot to tell you my real name, didn't I!--Well, my last name and the dog's first name are just the same. Funny, isn't it? (You'll find it in the back of almost any dictionary. )

 "With love, "MOLLY. 

 "P. S. Just turn the puppy out in the morning and he'll go home all right of his own accord. "

With his own pink tongue showing just a trifle between his teeth, Stanton lay for a moment and watched the dog on the rug. Cocking hissmall, keen, white head from one tippy angle to another, the littleterrier returned the stare with an expression that was altogether andunmistakably mirthful. "Oh, it's a jolly little beggar, isn't it?"said Stanton. "Come here, sir!" Only a suddenly pointed earacknowledged the summons. The dog himself did not budge. "Come here, Isay!" Stanton repeated with harsh peremptoriness. Palpably thelittle dog winked at him. Then in succession the little dog dodgedadroitly a knife, a spoon, a copy of Browning's poems, and severalother sizable articles from the table close to Stanton's elbow. Nothing but the dictionary seemed too big to throw. Finally with agrin that could not be disguised even from the dog, Stanton began torummage with eye and hand through the intricate back pages of thedictionary. 

[Illustration: A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging anexceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier]

"You silly little fool, " he said. "Won't you mind unless you arespoken to by name?"

"Aaron--Abidel--Abel--Abiathar--" he began to read out with petulantcuriosity, "Baldwin--Barachias--Bruno (Oh, hang!) Cadwallader--Cæsar--Caleb(What nonsense!) Ephraim--Erasmus (How could a girl be named anything likethat!) Gabriel--Gerard--Gershom (Imagine whistling a dog to the name ofGershom!) Hannibal--Hezekiah--Hosea (Oh, Hell!)" Stolidly with unheedful, drooping ears the little fox-terrier resumed his seat on the rug. "Ichabod--Jabez--Joab, " Stanton's voice persisted, experimentally. By nineo'clock, in all possible variations of accent and intonation, he had quitecompletely exhausted the alphabetical list as far as "K. " and the littledog was blinking himself to sleep on the far side of the room. Somethingabout the dog's nodding contentment started Stanton's mouth to yawning andfor almost an hour he lay in the lovely, restful consciousness of being atleast half asleep. But at ten o'clock he roused up sharply and resumed thetask at hand, which seemed suddenly to have assumed really vitalimportance. "Laban--Lorenzo--Marcellus, " he began again in a loud, clear, compelling voice. "Meredith--" (Did the little dog stir? Did he sit up?)"Meredith? Meredith?" The little dog barked. Something in Stanton's brainflashed. "It is 'Merry' for the dog?" he quizzed. "Here, MERRY!" In anotherinstant the little creature had leaped upon the foot of his bed, and wastalking away at a great rate with all sorts of ecstatic grunts and growls. Stanton's hand went out almost shyly to the dog's head. "So it's 'MollyMeredith', " he mused. But after all there was no reason to be shy about it. It was the _dog's_ head he was stroking. 

Tied to the little dog's collar when he went home the next morning wasa tiny, inconspicuous tag that said "That was easy! The pup'sname--and yours--is 'Meredith. ' Funny name for a dog but nice for agirl. "

The Serial-Letter Co. 's answers were always prompt, even thoughperplexing. 

 "DEAR LAD, " came this special answer. "You are quite right about the dog. And I compliment you heartily on your shrewdness. But I must confess, --even though it makes you very angry with me, that I have deceived you absolutely concerning my own name. Will you forgive me utterly if I hereby promise never to deceive you again? Why what could I possibly, possibly do with a great solemn name like 'Meredith'? My truly name, Sir, my really, truly, honest-injun name is 'Molly Make-Believe'. Don't you know the funny little old song about 'Molly Make-Believe'? Oh, surely you do:

 "'Molly, Molly Make-Believe, Keep to your play if you would not grieve! For Molly-Mine here's a hint for you, Things that are true are apt to be blue!'

 "Now you remember it, don't you? Then there's something about

 "'Molly, Molly Make-a-Smile, Wear it, swear it all the while. Long as your lips are framed for a joke, Who can prove that your heart is broke?'

 "Don't you love that 'is broke'! Then there's the last verse--my favorite:

 "'Molly, Molly Make-a-Beau, Make him of mist or make him of snow, Long as your DREAM stays fine and fair, _Molly, Molly what do you care!_'"

"Well, I'll wager that her name _is_ 'Meredith' just the same, " vowedStanton, "and she's probably madder than scat to think that I hit itright. "

Whether the daily overtures from the Serial-Letter Co. Proved to bedogs or love-letters or hot-water bottles or funny old songs, it wasreasonably evident that something unique was practically guaranteed tohappen every single, individual night of the six weeks' subscriptioncontract. Like a youngster's joyous dream of chronic Christmas Eves, this realization alone was enough to put an absurdly delicious thrillof expectancy into any invalid's otherwise prosy thoughts. 

Yet the next bit of attention from the Serial-Letter Co. Did notplease Stanton one half as much as it embarrassed him. 

Wandering socially into the room from his own apartments below, ayoung lawyer friend of Stanton's had only just seated himself on thefoot of Stanton's bed when an expressman also arrived with two largepasteboard hat-boxes which he straightway dumped on the bed betweenthe two men with the laconic message that he would call for them againin the morning. 

"Heaven preserve me!" gasped Stanton. "What is this?"

Fearsomely out of the smaller of the two boxes he lifted with muchrustling snarl of tissue paper a woman's brown fur-hat, --very soft, very fluffy, inordinately jaunty with a blush-pink rose nestling deepin the fur. Out of the other box, twice as large, twice as rustly, flaunted a green velvet cavalier's hat, with a green ostrich featheras long as a man's arm drooping languidly off the brim. 

"Holy Cat!" said Stanton. 

Pinned to the green hat's crown was a tiny note. The handwriting atleast was pleasantly familiar by this time. 

"Oh, I say!" cried the lawyer delightedly. 

With a desperately painful effort at nonchalance, Stanton shoved hisright fist into the brown hat and his left fist into the green one, and raised them quizzically from the bed. 

"Darned--good-looking--hats, " he stammered. 

"Oh, I say!" repeated the lawyer with accumulative delight. 

Crimson to the tip of his ears, Stanton rolled his eyes franticallytowards the little note. 

"She sent 'em up just to show 'em to me, " he quoted wildly. "Just'cause I'm laid up so and can't get out on the streets to see thestyles for myself. --And I've got to choose between them for her!" heejaculated. "She says she can't decide alone which one to keep!"

"Bully for her!" cried the lawyer, surprisingly, slapping his knee. "The cunning little girl!"

Speechless with astonishment, Stanton lay and watched his visitor, then "Well, which one would you choose?" he asked with unmistakablerelief. 

The lawyer took the hats and scanned them carefully. "Let--me--see" heconsidered. "Her hair is so blond--"

"No, it's red!" snapped Stanton. 

With perfect courtesy the lawyer swallowed his mistake. "Oh, excuseme, " he said. "I forgot. But with her height--"

"She hasn't any height, " groaned Stanton. "I tell you she's little. "

"Choose to suit yourself, " said the lawyer coolly. He himself hadadmired Cornelia from afar off. 

The next night, to Stanton's mixed feelings of relief anddisappointment the "surprise" seemed to consist in the fact thatnothing happened at all. Fully until midnight the sense of reliefcomforted him utterly. But some time after midnight, his hungry mind, like a house-pet robbed of an accustomed meal, began to wake and fretand stalk around ferociously through all the long, empty, aching, early morning hours, searching for something novel to think about. 

By supper-time the next evening he was in an irritable mood that madehim fairly clutch the special delivery letter out of the postman'shand. It was rather a thin, tantalizing little letter, too. All itsaid was, "To-night, Dearest, until one o'clock, in a cabbage-colored gown all shimmery with green and blue and September frost-lights, I'm going to sit up by my white birch-wood fire and read aloud to you. Yes! Honest-Injun! And out of Browning, too. Did you notice your copy was marked? What shall I read to you? Shall it be

 "'If I could have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pale gold. '

 "or

 'Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself? Do I live in a house you would like to see?'

 "or

 'I am a Painter who cannot paint, ----No end to all I cannot do. _Yet do one thing at least I can, Love a man, or hate a man!_'

 "or just

 'Escape me? Never, Beloved! While I am I, and you are you!'

 "Oh, Honey! Won't it be fun? Just you and I, perhaps, in all this Big City, sitting up and thinking about each other. Can you smell the white birch smoke in this letter?"

[Illustration: "Well I'll be hanged, " growled Stanton, "if I'm goingto be strung by any boy!"]

Almost unconsciously Stanton raised the page to his face. Unmistakably, up from the paper rose the strong, vivid scent--of abriar-wood pipe. 

"Well I'll be hanged, " growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be strung byany boy!" Out of all proportion the incident irritated him. 

But when, the next evening, a perfectly tremendous bunch of yellowjonquils arrived with a penciled line suggesting, "If you'll put thesesolid gold posies in your window to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, so I'll surely know just which window is yours, I'll look up--when Igo past, " Stanton most peremptorily ordered the janitor to display thebouquet as ornately as possible along the narrow window-sill of thebiggest window that faced the street. Then all through the night helay dozing and waking intermittently, with a lovely, scared feeling inthe pit of his stomach that something really rather exciting was aboutto happen. By surely half-past seven he rose laboriously from his bed, huddled himself into his black-sheep wrapper and settled himself downas warmly as could be expected, close to the draughty edge of thewindow. 

V

"Little and lame and red-haired and brown-eyed, " he kept repeating tohimself. 

Old people and young people, cab-drivers and jaunty young girls, andfat blue policeman, looked up, one and all with quick-brighteningfaces at the really gorgeous Spring-like flame of jonquils, but in awhole chilly, wearisome hour the only red-haired person that passedwas an Irish setter puppy, and the only lame person was awooden-legged beggar. 

Cold and disgusted as he was, Stanton could not altogether helplaughing at his own discomfiture. 

"Why--hang that little girl! She ought to be s-p-a-n-k-e-d, " hechuckled as he climbed back into his tiresome bed. 

Then as though to reward his ultimate good-nature the very next mailbrought him a letter from Cornelia, and rather a remarkable lettertoo, as in addition to the usual impersonal comments on the weatherand the tennis and the annual orange crop, there was actually onewhole, individual, intimate sentence that distinguished the letter ashaving been intended solely for him rather than for Cornelia'sdressmaker or her coachman's invalid daughter, or her own youngestbrother. This was the sentence:

 "Really, Carl, you don't know how glad I am that in spite of all your foolish objections, I kept to my original purpose of not announcing my engagement until after my Southern trip. You've no idea what a big difference it makes in a girl's good time at a great hotel like this. "

This sentence surely gave Stanton a good deal of food for his day'sthoughts, but the mental indigestion that ensued was not altogetherpleasant. 

Not until evening did his mood brighten again. Then--

 "Lad of Mine, " whispered Molly's gentler letter. "Lad of Mine, _how blond your hair is_!--Even across the chin-tickling tops of those yellow jonquils this morning, I almost laughed to see the blond, blond shine of you. --Some day I'm going to stroke that hair. " (Yes!)

 "P. S. The Little Dog came home all right. "

With a gasp of dismay Stanton sat up abruptly in bed and tried torevisualize every single, individual pedestrian who had passed hiswindow in the vicinity of eight o'clock that morning. "She evidentlyisn't lame at all, " he argued, "or little, or red-haired, or anything. Probably her name isn't Molly, and presumably it isn't even'Meredith. ' But at least she did go by: And is my hair so veryblond?" he asked himself suddenly. Against all intention his mouthbegan to prance a little at the corners. 

As soon as he could possibly summon the janitor, he despatched histhird note to the Serial-Letter Co. , but this one bore a distinctlysealed inner envelope, directed, "For Molly. Personal. " And themessage in it, though brief was utterly to the point. "Couldn't you_please_ tell a fellow who you are?"

But by the conventional bed-time hour the next night he wished mostheartily that he had not been so inquisitive, for the onlyentertainment that came to him at all was a jonquil-colored telegramwarning him--

 "Where the apple reddens do not pry, Lest we lose our Eden--you and I. "

The couplet was quite unfamiliar to Stanton, but it rhymed sickeninglythrough his brain all night long like the consciousness of anover-drawn bank account. 

It was the very next morning after this that all the Boston papersflaunted Cornelia's aristocratic young portrait on their front pageswith the striking, large-type announcement that "One of Boston'sFairest Debutantes Makes a Daring Rescue in Florida waters. Hotel CookCapsized from Row Boat Owes His Life to the Pluck and Endurance--etc. , etc. "

With a great sob in his throat and every pulse pounding, Stanton layand read the infinite details of the really splendid story; a group ofyoung girls dallying on the Pier; a shrill cry from the bay; thesudden panic-stricken helplessness of the spectators, and then withequal suddenness the plunge of a single, feminine figure into thewater; the long hard swim; the furious struggle; the final victory. Stingingly, as though it had been fairly branded into his eyes, hesaw the vision of Cornelia's heroic young face battling above thehorrible, dragging-down depths of the bay. The bravery, the risk, theghastly chances of a less fortunate ending, sent shiver after shiverthrough his already tortured senses. All the loving thoughts in hisnature fairly leaped to do tribute to Cornelia. "Yes!" he reasoned, "Cornelia was made like that! No matter what the cost to herself--nomatter what was the price--Cornelia would never, never fail to do her_duty_!" When he thought of the weary, lagging, riskful weeks thatwere still to ensue before he should actually see Cornelia again, hefelt as though he should go utterly mad. The letter that he wrote toCornelia that night was like a letter written in a man's ownheart-blood. His hand trembled so that he could scarcely hold the pen. 

Cornelia did not like the letter. She said so frankly. The letter didnot seem to her quite "nice. " "Certainly, " she attested, "it was notexactly the sort of letter that one would like to show one's mother. "Then, in a palpably conscientious effort to be kind as well as just, she began to prattle inkily again about the pleasant, warm, sunnyweather. Her only comment on saving the drowning man was the merephrase that she was very glad that she had learned to be a goodswimmer. Never indeed since her absence had she spoken of missingStanton. Not even now, after what was inevitably a heart-rackingadventure, did she yield her lover one single iota of the informationwhich he had a lover's right to claim. Had she been frightened, forinstance--way down in the bottom of that serene heart of hers had shebeen frightened? In the ensuing desperate struggle for life had shestruggled just one little tiny bit harder because Stanton was in thatlife? Now, in the dreadful, unstrung reaction of the adventure, didher whole nature waken and yearn and cry out for that one heart in allthe world that belonged to her? Plainly, by her silence in the matter, she did not intend to share anything as intimate even as her fear ofdeath with the man whom she claimed to love. 

It was just this last touch of deliberate, selfish aloofness thatstartled Stanton's thoughts with the one persistent, brutally naggingquestion: After all, was a woman's undeniably glorious ability to savea drowning man the supreme, requisite of a happy marriage?

Day by day, night by night, hour by hour, minute by minute, thequestion began to dig into Stanton's brain, throwing much dust andconfusion into brain-corners otherwise perfectly orderly and sweet andclean. 

Week by week, grown suddenly and morbidly analytical, he watched forCornelia's letters with increasingly passionate hopefulness, and meteach fresh disappointment with increasingly passionate resentment. Except for the Serial-Letter Co. 's ingeniously varied attentions therewas practically nothing to help him make either day or night bearable. More and more Cornelia's infrequent letters suggested exquisitelypainted empty dishes offered to a starving person. More and more"Molly's" whimsical messages fed him and nourished him and joyouslypleased him like some nonsensically fashioned candy-box that yetproved brimming full of real food for a real man. Fight as he wouldagainst it, he began to cherish a sense of furious annoyance thatCornelia's failure to provide for him had so thrust him out, as itwere, to feed among strangers. With frowning perplexity and realworry he felt the tingling, vivid consciousness of Molly's personalitybegin to permeate and impregnate his whole nature. Yet when he triedto acknowledge and thereby cancel his personal sense of obligation tothis "Molly" by writing an exceptionally civil note of appreciation tothe Serial-Letter Co. , the Serial-Letter Co. Answered him tersely--

"Pray do not thank us for the jonquils, --blanket-wrapper, etc. , etc. Surely they are merely presents from yourself to yourself. It is yourmoney that bought them. "

And when he had replied briefly, "Well, thank you for your brains, then!" the "company" had persisted with undue sharpness, "Don't thankus for our brains. Brains are our business. "

VI

It was one day just about the end of the fifth week that poorStanton's long-accumulated, long-suppressed perplexity blew up noisilyjust like any other kind of steam. 

It was the first day, too, throughout all his illness that he had madeeven the slightest pretext of being up and about. Slippered if notbooted, blanket-wrappered if not coated, shaven at least, if notshorn, he had established himself fairly comfortably, late in theafternoon, at his big study-table close to the fire, where, in his lowMorris chair, with his books and his papers and his lamp close athand, he had started out once more to try and solve the absurd littleproblem that confronted him. Only an occasional twitch of pain in hisshoulder-blade, or an intermittent shudder of nerves along his spinehad interrupted in any possible way his almost frenzied absorption inhis subject. 

Here at the desk very soon after supper-time the Doctor had joinedhim, and with an unusual expression of leisure and friendliness hadsettled down lollingly on the other side of the fireplace with hisgreat square-toed shoes nudging the bright, brassy edge of the fender, and his big meerschaum pipe puffing the whole bleak room mostdeliciously, tantalizingly full of forbidden tobacco smoke. It was acomfortable, warm place to chat. The talk had begun with politics, drifted a little way toward the architecture of several new citybuildings, hovered a moment over the marriage of some mutual friend, and then languished utterly. 

With a sudden narrowing-eyed shrewdness the Doctor turned and watchedan unwonted flicker of worry on Stanton's forehead. 

"What's bothering you, Stanton?" he asked, quickly. "Surely you're notworrying any more about your rheumatism?"

"No, " said Stanton. "It--isn't--rheumatism. "

For an instant the two men's eyes held each other, and then Stantonbegan to laugh a trifle uneasily. 

"Doctor, " he asked quite abruptly, "Doctor, do you believe that anypossible conditions could exist--that would make it justifiable for aman to show a woman's love-letter to another man?"

"Why--y-e-s, " said the Doctor cautiously, "I think so. There mightbe--circumstances--"

Still without any perceptible cause, Stanton laughed again, andreaching out, picked up a folded sheet of paper from the table andhanded it to the Doctor. 

"Read that, will you?" he asked. "And read it out loud. "

With a slight protest of diffidence, the Doctor unfolded the paper, scanned the page for an instant, and began slowly. 

 "Carl of Mine. 

 "There's one thing I forgot to tell you. When you go to buy my engagement ring--I don't want any! No! I'd rather have two wedding-rings instead--two perfectly plain gold wedding-rings. And the ring for my passive left hand I want inscribed, 'To Be a Sweetness More Desired than Spring!' and the ring for my active right hand I want inscribed, 'His Soul to Keep!' Just that. 

 "And you needn't bother to write me that you don't understand, because you are not expected to understand. It is not Man's prerogative to understand. But you are perfectly welcome if you want, to call me crazy, because I am--utterly crazy on just one subject, and _that's you_. Why, Beloved, if--"

"Here!" cried Stanton suddenly reaching out and grabbing the letter. "Here! You needn't read any more!" His cheeks were crimson. 

The Doctor's eyes focused sharply on his face. "That girl loves you, "said the Doctor tersely. For a moment then the Doctor's lips puffedsilently at his pipe, until at last with an almost bashful gesture, hecried out abruptly: "Stanton, somehow I feel as though I owed you anapology, or rather, owed your fiancée one. Somehow when you told methat day that your young lady had gone gadding off to Floridaand--left you alone with your sickness, why I thought--well, mostevidently I have misjudged her. "

Stanton's throat gave a little gasp, then silenced again. He bit hislips furiously as though to hold back an exclamation. Then suddenlythe whole perplexing truth burst forth from him. 

"That isn't from my fiancée!" he cried out. "That's just aprofessional love-letter. I buy them by the dozen, --so much a week. "Reaching back under his pillow he extricated another letter. "_This_is from my fiancée, " he said. "Read it. Yes, do. "

"Aloud?" gasped the Doctor. 

Stanton nodded. His forehead was wet with sweat. 

 "DEAR CARL, "The weather is still very warm. I am riding horseback almost every morning, however, and playing tennis almost every afternoon. There seem to be an exceptionally large number of interesting people here this winter. In regard to the list of names you sent me for the wedding, really, Carl, I do not see how I can possibly accommodate so many of your friends without seriously curtailing my own list. After all you must remember that it is the bride's day, not the groom's. And in regard to your question as to whether we expect to be home for Christmas and could I possibly arrange to spend Christmas Day with you--why, Carl, you are perfectly preposterous! Of course it is very kind of you to invite me and all that, but how could mother and I possibly come to your rooms when our engagement is not even announced? And besides there is going to be a very smart dance here Christmas Eve that I particularly wish to attend. And there are plenty of Christmases coming for you and me. 

 "Cordially yours, "CORNELIA. 

 "P. S. Mother and I hope that your rheumatism is much better. "

"That's the girl who loves me, " said Stanton not unhumorously. Thensuddenly all the muscles around his mouth tightened like the facialmuscles of a man who is hammering something. "I mean it!" he insisted. "I mean it--absolutely. That's the--girl--who--loves--me!"

Silently the two men looked at each other for a second. Then theyboth burst out laughing. 

"Oh, yes, " said Stanton at last, "I know it's funny. That's just thetrouble with it. It's altogether too funny. "

Out of a book on the table beside him he drew the thin gray andcrimson circular of The Serial-Letter Co. And handed it to the Doctor. Then after a moment's rummaging around on the floor beside him, heproduced with some difficulty a long, pasteboard box fairly bulgingwith papers and things. 

"These are the--communications from my make-believe girl, " heconfessed grinningly. "Oh, of course they're not all letters, " hehurried to explain. "Here's a book on South America. --I'm a rubberbroker, you know, and of course I've always been keen enough about theNew England end of my job, but I've never thought anything so veryspecial about the South American end of it. But that girl--thatmake-believe girl, I mean--insists that I ought to know all aboutSouth America, so she sent me this book; and it's corking reading, too--all about funny things like eating monkeys and parrots andtoasted guinea-pigs--and sleeping outdoors in black jungle-nightsunder mosquito netting, mind you, as a protection against prowlingpanthers. --And here's a queer little newspaper cutting that she sentme one blizzardy Sunday telling all about some big violin maker whoalways went out into the forests himself and chose his violin woodsfrom the _north_ side of the trees. Casual little item. You don'tthink anything about it at the moment. It probably isn't true. And tosave your soul you couldn't tell what kind of trees violins are madeout of, anyway. But I'll wager that never again will you wake in thenight to listen to the wind without thinking of the greatstorm-tossed, moaning, groaning, slow-toughening foresttrees--learning to be violins!. . . And here's a funny little old silverporringer that she gave me, she says, to make my 'old gray gruel tasteshinier. ' And down at the bottom of the bowl--the ruthless littlepirate--she's taken a knife or a pin or something and scratched thewords, 'Excellent Child!'--But you know I never noticed that part ofit at all till last week. You see I've only been eating down to thebottom of the bowl just about a week. --And here's a catalogue of aboy's school, four or five catalogues in fact that she sent me oneevening and asked me if I please wouldn't look them over right awayand help her decide where to send her little brother. Why, man, ittook me almost all night! If you get the athletics you want in oneschool, then likelier than not you slip up on the manual training, and if they're going to schedule eight hours a week for Latin, whywhere in Creation--?"

Shrugging his shoulders as though to shrug aside absolutely anypossible further responsibility concerning, "little brother, " Stantonbegan to dig down deeper into the box. Then suddenly all the grin cameback to his face. 

"And here are some sample wall papers that she sent me for 'ourhouse', " he confided, flushing. "What do you think of that bronze onethere with the peacock feathers?--say, old man, think of alibrary--and a cannel coal fire--and a big mahogany desk--and ared-haired girl sitting against that paper! And this sun-shiny tintfor a breakfast-room isn't half bad, is it?--Oh yes, and here are thetime-tables, and all the pink and blue maps about Colorado and Arizonaand the 'Painted Desert'. If we can 'afford it, ' she writes, she'wishes we could go to the Painted Desert on our wedding trip. '--Butreally, old man, you know it isn't such a frightfully expensivejourney. Why if you leave New York on Wednesday--Oh, hang it all!What's the use of showing you any more of this nonsense?" he finishedabruptly. 

With brutal haste he started cramming everything back into place. "Itis nothing but nonsense!" he acknowledged conscientiously; "nothing inthe world except a boxful of make-believe thoughts from a make-believegirl. And here, " he finished resolutely, "are my own fiancée'sthoughts--concerning me. "

Out of his blanket-wrapper pocket he produced and spread out beforethe Doctor's eyes five thin letters and a postal-card. 

"Not exactly thoughts concerning _you_, even so, are they?" quizzedthe Doctor. 

Stanton began to grin again. "Well, thoughts concerning the weather, then--if that suits you any better. "

Twice the Doctor swallowed audibly. Then, "But it's hardly fair--isit--to weigh a boxful of even the prettiest lies against five of eventhe slimmest real, true letters?" he asked drily. 

"But they're not lies!" snapped Stanton. "Surely you don't callanything a lie unless not only the fact is false, but the fancy, also, is maliciously distorted! Now take this case right before us. Supposethere isn't any 'little brother' at all; suppose there isn't any'Painted Desert', suppose there isn't any 'black sheep up on agrandfather's farm', suppose there isn't _anything_; suppose, I say, that every single, individual fact stated is _false_--what earthlydifference does it make so long as the _fancy_ still remains thetruest, realest, dearest, funniest thing that ever happened to afellow in his life?"

"Oh, ho!" said the Doctor. "So that's the trouble is it! It isn't justrheumatism that's keeping you thin and worried looking, eh? It's onlythat you find yourself suddenly in the embarrassing predicament ofbeing engaged to one girl and--in love with another?"

"N--o!" cried Stanton frantically. "N--O! That's the mischief ofit--the very mischief! I don't even know that the Serial-Letter Co. _is_ a girl. Why it might be an old lady, rather whimsically inclined. Even the oldest lady, I presume, might very reasonably perfume hernote-paper with cinnamon roses. It might even be a boy. One letterindeed smelt very strongly of being a boy--and mighty good tobacco, too! And great heavens! what have I got to prove that it isn't even anold man--some poor old worn out story-writer trying to ease out theragged end of his years?"

[Illustration: Some poor old worn-out story-writer]

"Have you told your fiancée about it?" asked the Doctor. 

Stanton's jaw dropped. "Have I told my fiancée about it?" he mocked. "Why it was she who sent me the circular in the first place! But, 'tell her about it'? Why, man, in ten thousand years, and then some, how could I make any sane person understand?"

"You're beginning to make me understand, " confessed the Doctor. 

"Then you're no longer sane, " scoffed Stanton. "The crazy magic of ithas surely then taken possession of you too. Why how could I go to anysane person like Cornelia--and Cornelia is the most absolutely, hopelessly sane person you ever saw in your life--how could I go toanyone like that, and announce: 'Cornelia, if you find any perplexingchange in me during your absence--and your unconscious neglect--it isonly that I have fallen quite madly in love with a person'--would youcall it a person?--who doesn't even exist. Therefore for the sake ofthis 'person who doesn't exist', I ask to be released. "

"Oh! So you do ask to be released?" interrupted the Doctor. 

"Why, no! Certainly not!" insisted Stanton. "Suppose the girl you lovedoes hurt your feelings a little bit now and then, would any man goahead and give up a real flesh-and-blood sweetheart for the sake ofeven the most wonderful paper-and-ink girl whom he was reading aboutin an unfinished serial story? Would he, I say--would he?"

"Y-e-s, " said the Doctor soberly. "Y-e-s, I think he would, if whatyou call the 'paper-and-ink girl' suggested suddenly an entirely new, undreamed-of vista of emotional and spiritual satisfaction. "

"But I tell you 'she's' probably a BOY!" persisted Stanton doggedly. 

"Well, why don't you go ahead and find out?" quizzed the Doctor. 

"Find out?" cried Stanton hotly. "Find out? I'd like to know howanybody is going to find out, when the only given address is a privatepost-office box, and as far as I know there's no sex to a post-officebox. Find out? Why, man, that basket over there is full of my lettersreturned to me because I tried to 'find out'. The first time I asked, they answered me with just a teasing, snubbing telegram, but eversince then they've simply sent back my questions with a stern printedslip announcing, "Your letter of ---- is hereby returned to you. Kindly allow us to call your attention to the fact that we are notrunning a correspondence bureau. Our circular distinctly states, etc. "

"Sent you a printed slip?" cried the Doctor scoffingly. "Thelove-letter business must be thriving. Very evidently you are by nomeans the only importunate subscriber. "

"Oh, Thunder!" growled Stanton. The idea seemed to be new to him andnot altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his face began to brighten. "No, I'm lying, " he said. "No, they haven't always sent me a printedslip. It was only yesterday that they sent me a rather real sort ofletter. You see, " he explained, "I got pretty mad at last and I wrotethem frankly and told them that I didn't give a darn who 'Molly' was, but simply wanted to know _what_ she was. I told them that it was justgratitude on my part, the most formal, impersonal sort of gratitude--aperfectly plausible desire to say 'thank you' to some one who hadbeen awfully decent to me these past few weeks. I said right out thatif 'she' was a boy, why we'd surely have to go fishing together in thespring, and if 'she' was an old man, the very least I could do wouldbe to endow her with tobacco, and if 'she' was an old lady, why I'dsimply be obliged to drop in now and then of a rainy evening and holdher knitting for her. "

"And if 'she' were a girl?" probed the Doctor. 

Stanton's mouth began to twitch. "Then Heaven help me!" he laughed. 

"Well, what answer did you get?" persisted the Doctor. "What do youcall a realish sort of letter?"

With palpable reluctance Stanton drew a gray envelope out of the cuffof his wrapper. 

"I suppose you might as well see the whole business, " he admittedconsciously. 

There was no special diffidence in the Doctor's manner this time. Hisclutch on the letter was distinctly inquisitive, and he read out theopening sentences with almost rhetorical effect. 

 "Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do you persist in hectoring me so? Don't you understand that I've got only a certain amount of ingenuity anyway, and if you force me to use it all in trying to conceal my identity from you, how much shall I possibly have left to devise schemes for your amusement? Why do you persist, for instance, in wanting to see my face? Maybe I haven't got any face! Maybe I lost my face in a railroad accident. How do you suppose it would make me feel, then, to have you keep teasing and teasing. --Oh, Carl!

 "Isn't it enough for me just to tell you once for all that there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe, biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things, I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night on a very small bed of very big pain. Maybe worse than being sick I'm starving poor, and maybe, worse than being sick or poor, I am most horribly tired of myself. Of course if you are very young and very prancy and reasonably good-looking, and still are tired of yourself, you can almost always rest yourself by going on the stage where--with a little rouge and a different colored wig, and a new nose, and skirts instead of trousers, or trousers instead of skirts, and age instead of youth, and badness instead of goodness--you can give your ego a perfectly limitless number of happy holidays. But if you were oldish, I say, and pitifully 'shut in', just how would you go to work, I wonder, to rest your personality? How for instance could you take your biggest, grayest, oldest worry about your doctor's bill, and rouge it up into a radiant, young joke? And how, for instance, out of your lonely, dreary, middle-aged orphanhood are you going to find a way to short-skirt your rheumatic pains, and braid into two perfectly huge pink-bowed pigtails the hair that you _haven't got_, and caper round so ecstatically before the foot-lights that the old gentleman and lady in the front seat absolutely swear you to be the living image of their 'long lost Amy'? And how, if the farthest journey you ever will take again is the monotonous hand-journey from your pillow to your medicine bottle, then how, for instance, with map or tinsel or attar of roses, can you go to work to solve even just for your own satisfaction the romantic, shimmering secrets of--Morocco?

 "Ah! You've got me now, you think? All decided in your mind that I am an aged invalid? I didn't say so. I just said 'maybe'. Likelier than not I've saved my climax for its proper place. How do you know, --for instance, that I'm not a--'Cullud Pusson'?--So many people are. "

Without signature of any sort, the letter ended abruptly then andthere, and as though to satisfy his sense of something leftunfinished, the Doctor began at the beginning and read it all overagain in a mumbling, husky whisper. 

"Maybe she is--'colored', " he volunteered at last. 

"Very likely, " said Stanton perfectly cheerfully. "It's just thoseoccasional humorous suggestions that keep me keyed so heroically up tothe point where I'm actually infuriated if you even suggest that Imight be getting really interested in this mysterious Miss Molly! Youhaven't said a single sentimental thing about her that I haven'tscoffed at--now have you?"

"N--o, " acknowledged the Doctor. "I can see that you've covered yourretreat all right. Even if the author of these letters should turn outto be a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812, you still could say, 'Itold you so'. But all the same, I'll wager that you'd gladly give ahundred dollars, cash down, if you could only go ahead and prove thelittle girl's actual existence. "

Stanton's shoulders squared suddenly but his mouth retained at least afaint vestige of its original smile. 

"You mistake the situation entirely, " he said. "It's the little girl'snon-existence that I am most anxious to prove. "

Then utterly without reproach or interference, he reached over andgrabbed a forbidden cigar from the Doctor's cigar case, and lightedit, and retreated as far as possible into the gray film of smoke. 

It was minutes and minutes before either man spoke again. Then at lastafter much crossing and re-crossing of his knees the Doctor askeddrawlingly, "And when is it that you and Cornelia are planning to bemarried?"

"Next April, " said Stanton briefly. 

"U--m--m, " said the Doctor. After a few more minutes he said, "U--m--m, " again. 

[Illustration: "Maybe she is--'colored, '" he volunteered at last]

The second "U--m--m" seemed to irritate Stanton unduly. "Is it yourhead that's spinning round?" he asked tersely. "You sound like a Dutchtop!"

The Doctor raised his hands cautiously to his forehead. "Your storydoes make me feel a little bit giddy, " he acknowledged. Then withsudden intensity, "Stanton, you're playing a dangerous game for anengaged man. Cut it out, I say!"

"Cut what out?" said Stanton stubbornly. 

The Doctor pointed exasperatedly towards the big box of letters. "Cutthose out, " he said. "A sentimental correspondence with a girlwho's--more interesting than your fiancée!"

"W-h-e-w!" growled Stanton, "I'll hardly stand for that statement. "

"Well, then lie down for it, " taunted the Doctor. "Keep right on beingsick and worried and--. " Peremptorily he reached out both handstowards the box. "Here!" he insisted. "Let's dump the wholemischievous nonsense into the fire and burn it up!"

With an "Ouch, " of pain Stanton knocked the Doctor's hands away. "Burnup my letters?" he laughed. "Well, I guess not! I wouldn't even burnup the wall papers. I've had altogether too much fun out of them. Andas for the books, the Browning, etc. --why hang it all, I've gottenawfully fond of those books!" Idly he picked up the South Americanvolume and opened the fly-leaf for the Doctor to see. "Carl from hisMolly, " it said quite distinctly. 

"Oh, yes, " mumbled the Doctor. "It looks very pleasant. There's absolutelyno denying that it looks very pleasant. And some day--out of an old trunk, or tucked down behind your library encyclopedias--your wife will discoverthe book and ask blandly, 'Who was Molly? I don't remember your ever sayinganything about a "Molly". --Just someone you used to know?' And your answerwill be innocent enough: 'No, dear, _someone whom I never knew_!' But howabout the pucker along your spine, and the awfully foolish, grinny feelingaround your cheek-bones? And on the street and in the cars and at thetheaters you'll always and forever be looking and searching, and askingyourself, 'Is it by any chance possible that this girl sitting next to menow--?' And your wife will keep saying, with just a barely perceptible edgein her voice, 'Carl, do you know that red-haired girl whom we just passed?You stared at her so!' And you'll say, 'Oh, no! I was merely wonderingif--' Oh yes, you'll always and forever be 'wondering if'. And mark mywords, Stanton, people who go about the world with even the most innocentchronic question in their eyes, are pretty apt to run up against anunfortunately large number of wrong answers. "

"But you take it all so horribly seriously, " protested Stanton. "Whyyou rave and rant about it as though it was actually my affectionsthat were involved!"

"Your affections?" cried the Doctor in great exasperation. "Youraffections? Why, man, if it was only your affections, do you suppose I'dbe wasting even so much as half a minute's worry on you? But it's your_imagination_ that's involved. That's where the blooming mischief lies. Affection is all right. Affection is nothing but a nice, safe flame thatfeeds only on one special kind of fuel, --its own particular object. You've got an 'affection' for Cornelia, and wherever Cornelia fails tofeed that affection it is mercifully ordained that the starved flameshall go out into cold gray ashes without making any further troublewhatsoever. But you've got an 'imagination' for this make-believegirl--heaven help you!--and an 'imagination' is a great, wild, seething, insatiate tongue of fire that, thwarted once and for all in its originaldesire to gorge itself with realities, will turn upon you body and soul, and lick up your crackling fancy like so much kindling wood--and searyour common sense, and scorch your young wife's happiness. Nothing butCornelia herself will ever make you want--Cornelia. But the other girl, the unknown girl--why she's the face in the clouds, she's the voice inthe sea; she's the glow of the sunset; she's the hush of the Junetwilight! Every summer breeze, every winter gale, will fan the embers!Every thumping, twittering, twanging pulse of an orchestra, every--. Oh, Stanton, I say, it isn't the ghost of the things that are dead that willever come between you and Cornelia. There never yet was the ghost of anylost thing that couldn't be tamed into a purring household pet. But--the--ghost--of--a--thing--that--you've--never--yet--found? _That_, I tell you, is a very different matter!"

Pounding at his heart, and blazing in his cheeks, the insidiousargument, the subtle justification, that had been teeming in Stanton'sveins all the week, burst suddenly into speech. 

"But I gave Cornelia the _chance_ to be 'all the world' to me, " heprotested doggedly, "and she didn't seem to care a hang about it!Great Scott, man! Are you going to call a fellow unfaithful becausehe hikes off into a corner now and then and reads a bit of Browning, for instance, all to himself--or wanders out on the piazza some nightall sole alone to stare at the stars that happen to bore his wife toextinction?"

"But you'll never be able to read Browning again 'all by yourself', "taunted the Doctor. "Whether you buy it fresh from the presses orborrow it stale and old from a public library, you'll never findanother copy as long as you live that doesn't smell of cinnamon roses. And as to 'star-gazing' or any other weird thing that your wifedoesn't care for--you'll never go out alone any more into dawns ordarknesses without the very tingling conscious presence of a wonderwhether the 'other girl' _would_ have cared for it!"

"Oh, shucks!" said Stanton. Then, suddenly his forehead puckered up. "Of course I've got a worry, " he acknowledged frankly. "Any fellow'sgot a worry who finds himself engaged to be married to a girl whoisn't keen enough about it to want to be all the world to him. But Idon't know that even the most worried fellow has any real cause to bescared, as long as the girl in question still remains the onlyflesh-and-blood girl on the face of the earth whom he wishes _did_like him well enough to want to be 'all the world' to him. "

"The only 'flesh-and-blood' girl?" scoffed the Doctor. "Oh, you're allright, Stanton. I like you and all that. But I'm mighty glad just thesame that it isn't my daughter whom you're going to marry, with allthis 'Molly Make-Believe' nonsense lurking in the background. Cut itout, Stanton, I say. Cut it out!"

"Cut it out?" mused Stanton somewhat distrait. "Cut it out? What!Molly Make-Believe?"

Under the quick jerk of his knees the big box of letters and papersand things brimmed over in rustling froth across the whole surface ofthe table. Just for a second the muscles in his throat tightened atrifle. Then, suddenly he burst out laughing--wildly, uproariously, like an excited boy. 

"Cut it out?" he cried. "But it's such a joke! Can't you see that it'snothing in the world except a perfectly delicious, perfectlyintangible joke?"

"U--m--m, " reiterated the Doctor. 

In the very midst of his reiteration, there came a sharp rap at thedoor, and in answer to Stanton's cheerful permission to enter, theso-called "delicious, intangible joke" manifested itself abruptly inthe person of a rather small feminine figure very heavily muffled upin a great black cloak, and a rose-colored veil that shrouded her noseand chin bluntly like the nose and chin of a face only half hewed outas yet from a block of pink granite. 

"It's only Molly, " explained an undeniably sweet little alto voice. "Am I interrupting you?"

VII

Jumping to his feet, the Doctor stood staring wildly from Stanton'samazed face to the perfectly calm, perfectly accustomed air of poisethat characterized every movement of the pink-shrouded visitor. Theamazement in fact never wavered for a second from Stanton's blush-redvisage, nor the supreme serenity from the lady's whole attitude. Butacross the Doctor's startled features a fearful, outragedconsciousness of having been deceived, warred mightily with aconsciousness of unutterable mirth. 

Advancing toward the fireplace with a rather slow-footed, hesitatinggait, the little visitor's attention focused suddenly on the clutteredtable and she cried out with unmistakable delight. "Why, what are youpeople doing with all my letters and things?"

Then climbing up on the sturdy brass fender, she thrust her pink, impenetrable features right into the scared, pallid face of the shabbyold clock and announced pointedly, "It's almost half-past seven. And Ican stay till just eight o'clock!"

When she turned around again the Doctor was gone. 

With a tiny shrug of her shoulders, she settled herself down then in abig, high-backed chair before the fire and stretched out her overshoedtoes to the shining edge of the fender. As far as any apparentself-consciousness was concerned, she might just as well have been allalone in the room. 

Convulsed with amusement, yet almost paralyzed by a certain stubborn, dumb sort of embarrassment, nothing on earth could have forcedStanton into making even an indefinite speech to the girl until shehad made at least one perfectly definite and reasonably illuminatingsort of speech to him. Biting his grinning lips into as straight aline as possible, he gathered up the scattered pages of the eveningpaper and attacked them furiously with scowling eyes. 

After a really dreadful interim of silence, the mysterious littlevisitor rose in a gloomy, discouraged kind of way, and climbing upagain on the narrow brass fender, peered once more into the face ofthe clock. 

"It's twenty minutes of eight, now, " she announced. Into her voicecrept for the first time the faintest perceptible suggestion of atremor. "It's twenty minutes of eight--now--and I've got to leave hereexactly at eight. Twenty minutes is a rather--a rather stingy littlebit out of a whole--lifetime, " she added falteringly. 

Then, and then only did Stanton's nervousness break forth suddenlyinto one wild, uproarious laugh that seemed to light up the wholedark, ominous room as though the gray, sulky, smoldering hearth-fireitself had exploded into iridescent flame. Chasing close behind themusical contagion of his deep guffaws followed the softer, gentlergiggle of the dainty pink-veiled lady. 

By the time they had both finished laughing it was fully quarter ofeight. 

"But you see it was just this way, " explained the pleasant littlevoice--all alto notes again. Cautiously a slim, unringed hand burrowedout from the somber folds of the big cloak, and raised the pinkmouth-mumbling veil as much as half an inch above the red-lipped speechline. "You see it was just this way. You paid me a lot of money--all inadvance--for a six weeks' special edition de luxe Love-Letter Serial. And I spent your money the day I got it; and worse than that I owedit--long before I even got it! And worst of all, I've got a chance nowto go home to-morrow for all the rest of the winter. No, I don't meanthat exactly. I mean I've found a chance to go up to Vermont and haveall my expenses paid--just for reading aloud every day to a lady whoisn't so awfully deaf. But you see I still owe you a week'ssubscription--and I can't refund you the money because I haven't got it. And it happens that I can't run a fancy love-letter business from thespecial house that I'm going to. There aren't enough resourcesthere--and all that. So I thought that perhaps--perhaps--considering howmuch you've been teasing and teasing to know who I was--I thought thatperhaps if I came here this evening and let you really see me--thatmaybe, you know--maybe, not positively, but just _maybe_--you'd bewilling to call that equivalent to one week's subscription. _Wouldyou?_"

In the sharp eagerness of her question she turned her shrouded facefull-view to Stanton's curious gaze, and he saw the little nervous, mischievous twitch of her lips at the edge of her masking pink veilresolve itself suddenly into a whimper of real pain. Yet so vivid werethe lips, so blissfully, youthfully, lusciously carmine, that everysingle, individual statement she made seemed only like a festivelittle announcement printed in red ink. 

"I guess I'm not a very--good business manager, " faltered thered-lipped voice with incongruous pathos. "Indeed I know I'm notbecause--well because--the Serial-Letter Co. Has 'gone broke!Bankrupt', is it, that you really say?"

With a little mockingly playful imitation of a stride she walked thefirst two fingers of her right hand across the surface of the table toStanton's discarded supper dishes. 

"Oh, please may I have that piece of cold toast?" she askedplaintively. No professional actress on the stage could have spokenthe words more deliciously. Even to the actual crunching of the toastin her little shining white teeth, she sought to illustrate asfantastically as possible the ultimate misery of a bankrupt personstarving for cold toast. 

Stanton's spontaneous laughter attested his full appreciation of hermimicry. 

"But I tell you the Serial-Letter Co. _has_ 'gone broke'!" shepersisted a trifle wistfully. "I guess--I guess it takes a man toreally run a business with any sort of financial success, 'cause yousee a man never puts anything except his head into his business. Andof course if you only put your head into it, then you go right alonggiving always just a little wee bit less than 'value received'--and soyou can't help, sir, making a profit. Why people would think you wereplain, stark crazy if you gave them even one more pair of poor rubberboots than they'd paid for. But a woman! Well, you see my littlebusiness was a sort of a scheme to sell sympathy--perfectly goodsympathy, you know--but to sell it to people who really needed it, instead of giving it away to people who didn't care anything about itat all. And you have to run that sort of business almost entirely withyour heart--and you wouldn't feel decent at all, unless you deliveredto everybody just a little tiny bit more sympathy than he paid for. Otherwise, you see you wouldn't be delivering perfectly good sympathy. So that's why--you understand now--that's why I had to send you myvery own woolly blanket-wrapper, and my very own silver porringer, andmy very own sling-shot that I fight city cats with, --because, you see, I had to use every single cent of your money right away to pay for thethings that I'd already bought for other people. "

"For other people?" quizzed Stanton a bit resentfully. 

"Oh, yes, " acknowledged the girl; "for several other people. " Then, "Did you like the idea of the 'Rheumatic Nights Entertainment'?" sheasked quite abruptly. 

"Did I like it?" cried Stanton. "Did I _like_ it?"

With a little shrugging air of apology the girl straightened up verystiffly in her chair. 

"Of course it wasn't exactly an original idea, " she explainedcontritely. "That is, I mean not original for you. You see, it'sreally a little club of mine--a little subscription club of rheumaticpeople who can't sleep; and I go every night in the week, an hour toeach one of them. There are only three, you know. There's a youngishlady in Boston, and a very, very old gentleman out in Brookline, andthe tiniest sort of a poor little sick girl in Cambridge. Sometimes Iturn up just at supper-time and jolly them along a bit with theirgruels. Sometimes I don't get around till ten or eleven o'clock in thegreat boo-black dark. From two to three in the morning seems to be thecruelest, grayest, coldest time for the little girl in Cambridge. . . . And I play the banjo decently well, you know, and sing more orless--and tell stories, or read aloud; and I most always go dressed upin some sort of a fancy costume 'cause I can't seem to find any otherthing to do that astonishes sick people so much and makes them sit upso bravely and look so shiny. And really, it isn't such dreadfullyhard work to do, because everything fits together so well. The shortskirts, for instance, that turn me into such a jolly prattlinggreat-grandchild for the poor old gentleman, make me just a perfectlyrational, contemporaneous-looking play-mate for the small Cambridgegirl. I'm so very, very little!"

"Only, of course, " she finished wryly; "only, of course, it costs sucha horrid big lot for costumes and carriages and things. That's what's'busted' me, as the boys say. And then, of course, I'm most dreadfullysleepy all the day times when I ought to be writing nice things for mySerial-Letter Co. Business. And then one day last week--" the vividred lips twisted oddly at one corner. "One night last week they sentme word from Cambridge that the little, little girl was going todie--and was calling and calling for the 'Gray-Plush Squirrel Lady'. So I hired a big gray squirrel coat from a furrier whom I know, and Iripped up my muff and made me the very best sort of a hot, gray, smothery face that I could--and I went out to Cambridge and sat threehours on the footboard of a bed, cracking jokes--and nuts--to beguilea little child's death-pain. And somehow it broke my heart--or myspirit--or something. Somehow I think I could have stood it betterwith my own skin face! Anyway the little girl doesn't need me anymore. Anyway, it doesn't matter if someone did need me!. . . I tell youI'm 'broke'! I tell you I haven't got one single solitary more thingto give! It isn't just my pocket-book that's empty: it's my headthat's spent, too! It's my heart that's altogether stripped! _And I'mgoing to run away! Yes, I am!_"

Jumping to her feet she stood there for an instant all out of breath, as though just the mere fancy thought of running away had almostexhausted her. Then suddenly she began to laugh. 

"I'm so tired of making up things, " she confessed; "why, I'm so tiredof making up grandfathers, I'm so tired of making up pirates, I'm sotired of making-up lovers--that I actually cherish the bill collectoras the only real, genuine acquaintance whom I have in Boston. Certainly there's no slightest trace of pretence about him!. . . Excuseme for being so flippant, " she added soberly, "but you see I haven'tgot any sympathy left even for myself. "

"But for heaven's sake!" cried Stanton, "why don't you let somebodyhelp you? Why don't you let me--"

"Oh, you _can_ help me!" cried the little red-lipped voice excitedly. "Oh, yes, indeed you can help me! That's why I came here this evening. You see I've settled up now with every one of my creditors except youand the youngish Boston lady, and I'm on my way to her house now. We're reading Oriental Fairy stories together. Truly I think she'll bevery glad indeed to release me from my contract when I offer her mycoral beads instead, because they are dreadfully nice beads, my real, unpretended grandfather carved them for me himself. . . . But how can Isettle with you? I haven't got anything left to settle with, and itmight be months and months before I could refund the actual cashmoney. So wouldn't you--couldn't you please call my coming here thisevening an equivalent to one week's subscription?"

[Illustration: "Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered]

Wriggling out of the cloak and veil that wrapped her like achrysalis she emerged suddenly a glimmering, shimmering littleoriental figure of satin and silver and haunting sandalwood--averitable little incandescent rainbow of spangled moonlight andflaming scarlet and dark purple shadows. Great, heavy, jet-black curlscaught back from her small piquant face by a blazing rhinestonefillet, --cheeks just a tiny bit over-tinted with rouge andexcitement, --big, red-brown eyes packed full of high lights like astartled fawn's, --bold in the utter security of her masquerade, yetscared almost to death by the persistent underlying heart-thump of herunescapable self-consciousness, --altogether as tantalizing, altogetheras unreal, as a vision out of the Arabian Nights, she stood therestaring quizzically at Stanton. 

"_Would_ you call it--an--equivalent? _Would_ you?" she askednervously. 

Then pirouetting over to the largest mirror in sight she began tosmooth and twist her silken sash into place. Somewhere at wrist orankle twittered the jingle of innumerable bangles. 

"Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered. "O--h--h!"

VIII

Everything that was discreet and engaged-to-be-married in Stanton'sconservative make-up exploded suddenly into one utterly irresponsiblespeech. 

"You little witch!" he cried out. "You little beauty! For heaven'ssake come over here and sit down in this chair where I can look atyou! I want to talk to you! I--"

Pirouetting once more before the mirror, she divided one fleet glancebetween admiration for herself and scorn for Stanton. 

"Oh, yes, I felt perfectly sure that you'd insist upon having me'pretty'!" she announced sternly. Then courtesying low to the groundin mock humility, she began to sing-song mischievously:

 "So Molly, Molly made-her-a-face, Made it of rouge and made it of lace. Long as the rouge and the lace are fair, Oh, Mr. Man, what do you care?"

"You don't need any rouge or lace to make _you_ pretty!" Stantonfairly shouted in his vehemence. "Anybody might have known that thatlovely, little mind of yours could only live in a--"

"Nonsense!" the girl interrupted, almost temperishly. Then with aquick, impatient sort of gesture she turned to the table, and pickingup book after book, opened it and stared in it as though it had been amirror. "Oh, maybe my mind is pretty enough, " she acknowledgedreluctantly. "But likelier than not, my face is not becoming--to me. "

Crossing slowly over to Stanton's side she seated herself, with muchjingling, rainbow-colored, sandalwood-scented dignity, in the chairthat the Doctor had just vacated. 

"Poor dear, you've been pretty sick, haven't you?" she mused gently. Cautiously then she reached out and touched the soft, woolly cuff ofhis blanket-wrapper. "Did you really like it?" she asked. 

Stanton began to smile again. "Did I really like it?" he repeatedjoyously. "Why, don't you know that if it hadn't been for you I shouldhave gone utterly mad these past few weeks? Don't you know that if ithadn't been for you--don't you know that if--" A little over-zealouslyhe clutched at the tinsel fringe on the oriental lady's fan. "Don'tyou know--don't you know that I'm--engaged to be married?" he finishedweakly. 

The oriental lady shivered suddenly, as any lady might shiver on aNovember night in thin silken clothes. "Engaged to be married?" shestammered. "Oh, yes! Why--of course! Most men are! Really unless youcatch a man very young and keep him absolutely constantly by yourside you cannot hope to walk even into his friendship--except acrossthe heart of some other woman. " Again she shivered and jingled ahundred merry little bangles. "But why?" she asked abruptly, "why, ifyou're engaged to be married, did you come and--buy love-letters ofme? My love-letters are distinctly for lonely people, " she addedseverely. 

"How dared you--How dared you go into the love-letter business in thefirst place?" quizzed Stanton dryly. "And when it comes to askingpersonal questions, how dared you send me printed slips in answer tomy letters to you? Printed slips, mind you!. . . How many men are youwriting love-letters to, anyway?"

The oriental lady threw out her small hands deprecatingly. "How manymen? Only two besides yourself. There's such a fad for nature studythese days that almost everybody this year has ordered the 'Gray-PlushSquirrel' series. But I'm doing one or two 'Japanese Fairies' for sickchildren, and a high school history class out in Omaha has ordered aweekly epistle from William of Orange. "

"Hang the High School class out in Omaha!" said Stanton. "It was thelove-letters that I was asking about. "

"Oh, yes, I forgot, " murmured the oriental lady. "Just two men besidesyourself, I said, didn't I? Well one of them is a life convict out inan Illinois prison. He's subscribed for a whole year--for afortnightly letter from a girl in Killarney who has got to be named'Katie'. He's a very, very old man, I think, but I don't even know hisname 'cause he's only a number now--'4632'--or something like that. And I have to send all my letters over to Killarney to be mailed--Oh, he's awfully particular about that. And it was pretty hard at firstworking up all the geography that he knew and I didn't. But--pshaw!You're not interested in Killarney. Then there's a New York boy downin Ceylon on a smelly old tea plantation. His people have dropped him, I guess, for some reason or other; so I'm just 'the girl from home' tohim, and I prattle to him every month or so about the things he usedto care about. It's easy enough to work that up from the socialcolumns in the New York papers--and twice I've been over to New Yorkto get special details for him; once to find out if his mother wasreally as sick as the Sunday paper said, and once--yes, really, once Ibutted in to a tea his sister was giving, and wrote him, yes, wrotehim all about how the moths were eating up the big moose-head in hisown front hall. And he sent an awfully funny, nice letter of thanks tothe Serial-Letter Co. --yes, he did! And then there's a crippled Frenchgirl out in the Berkshires who is utterly crazy, it seems, about the'Three Musketeers', so I'm d'Artagnan to her, and it's dreadfully hardwork--in French--but I'm learning a lot out of that, and--"

"There. Don't tell me any more!" cried Stanton. 

Then suddenly the pulses in his temples began to pound so hard and soloud that he could not seem to estimate at all just how loud he wasspeaking. 

"Who are you?" he insisted. "Who are you? Tell me instantly, I say!_Who are you anyway?_"

The oriental lady jumped up in alarm. "I'm no one at all--to you, " shesaid coolly, "except just--Molly Make-Believe. "

Something in her tone seemed to fairly madden Stanton. 

"You shall tell me who you are!" he cried. "You shall! I say youshall!"

Plunging forward he grabbed at her little bangled wrists and held themin a vise that sent the rheumatic pains shooting up his arms to addeven further frenzy to his brain. 

"Tell me who you are!" he grinned. "You shan't go out of here in tenthousand years till you've told me who you are!"

Frightened, infuriated, quivering with astonishment, the girl stoodtrying to wrench her little wrists out of his mighty grasp, stampingin perfectly impotent rage all the while with her soft-sandalled, jingling feet. 

"I won't tell you who I am! I won't! I won't!" she swore and resworein a dozen different staccato accents. The whole daring passion ofthe Orient that costumed her seemed to have permeated every fiber ofher small being. 

Then suddenly she drew in her breath in a long quivering sigh. Staringup into her face, Stanton gave a little groan of dismay, and releasedher hands. 

"Why, Molly! Molly! You're--crying, " he whispered. "Why, little girl!Why--"

Backing slowly away from him, she made a desperate effort to smilethrough her tears. 

"Now you've spoiled everything, " she said. 

"Oh no, not--everything, " argued Stanton helplessly from his chair, afraid to rise to his feet, afraid even to shuffle his slippers on thefloor lest the slightest suspicion of vehemence on his part shouldhasten that steady, backward retreat of hers towards the door. 

Already she had re-acquired her cloak and overshoes and was gropingout somewhat blindly for her veil in a frantic effort to avoid anypossible chance of turning her back even for a second on so dangerousa person as himself. 

"Yes, everything, " nodded the small grieved face. Yet the tragic, snuffling little sob that accompanied the words only served to add amost entrancing, tip-nosed vivacity to the statement. 

"Oh, of course I know, " she added hastily. "Oh, of course I knowperfectly well that I oughtn't to have come alone to your rooms likethis!" Madly she began to wind the pink veil round and round and roundher cheeks like a bandage. "Oh, of course I know perfectly well that itwasn't even remotely proper! But don't you think--don't you think thatif you've always been awfully, awfully strict and particular withyourself about things all your life, that you might haverisked--safely--just one little innocent, mischievous sort of a halfhour? Especially if it was the only possible way you could think of tosquare up everything and add just a little wee present besides? 'Causenothing, you know, that you can _afford_ to give ever seems exactly likegiving a really, truly present. It's got to hurt you somewhere to be a'present'. So my coming here this evening--this way--was altogether thebravest, scariest, unwisest, most-like-a-present-feeling-thing that Icould possibly think of to do--for you. And even if you hadn't spoiledeverything, I was going away to-morrow just the same forever and everand ever!"

Cautiously she perched herself on the edge of a chair, and thrust hernarrow, gold-embroidered toes into the wide, blunt depths of herovershoes. "Forever and ever!" she insisted almost gloatingly. 

"Not forever and _ever_!" protested Stanton vigorously. "You don'tthink for a moment, do you, that after all this wonderful, jollyfriendship of ours, you're going to drop right out of sight as thoughthe earth had opened?"

Even the little quick, forward lurch of his shoulders in the chairsent the girl scuttling to her feet again, one overshoe still in herhand. 

Just at the edge of the door-mat she turned and smiled at himmockingly. Really it had been a long time since she had smiled. 

"Surely you don't think that you'd be able to recognize me in mystreet clothes, do you?" she asked bluntly. 

Stanton's answering smile was quite as mocking as hers. 

"Why not?" he queried. "Didn't I have the pleasure of choosing yourwinter hat for you? Let me see, --it was brown, with a pinkrose--wasn't it? I should know it among a million. "

With a little shrug of her shoulders she leaned back against the doorand stared at him suddenly out of her big red-brown eyes with singularintentness. 

"Well, _will_ you call it an equivalent to one week's subscription?"she asked very gravely. 

Some long-sleeping devil of mischief awoke in Stanton's senses. 

"Equivalent to one whole week's subscription?" he repeated with mockincredulity. "A whole week--seven days and nights? Oh, no! No! No! Idon't think you've given me, yet, more than about--four days' worth tothink about. Just about four days' worth, I should think. "

Pushing the pink veil further and further back from her features, withplainly quivering hands, the girl's whole soul seemed to blaze out athim suddenly, and then wince back again. Then just as quickly a drolllittle gleam of malice glinted in her eyes. 

"Oh, all right then, " she smiled. "If you really think I've given youonly four days' and nights' worth of thoughts--here's something forthe fifth day and night. "

Very casually, yet still very accurately, her right hand reached outto the knob of the door. 

"To cancel my debt for the fifth day, " she said, "do you really'honest-injun' want to know who I am? I'll tell you! First, you'veseen me before. "

"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair. 

Something in the girl's quick clutch of the door-knob warned him quitedistinctly to relax again into his cushions. 

"Yes, " she repeated triumphantly. "And you've talked with me too, asoften as twice! And moreover you've danced with me!"

Tossing her head with sudden-born daring she reached up and snatchedoff her curly black wig, and shook down all around her such a great, shining, utterly glorious mass of mahogany colored hair that Stanton'sastonishment turned almost into faintness. 

"What?" he cried out. "What? You say I've seen you before? Talked withyou? Waltzed with you, perhaps? Never! I haven't! I tell you Ihaven't! I never saw that hair before! If I had, I shouldn't haveforgotten it to my dying day. Why--"

With a little wail of despair she leaned back against the door. "Youdon't even remember me _now_?" she mourned. "Oh dear, dear, dear! AndI thought _you_ were so beautiful!" Then, woman-like, her wholesympathy rushed to defend him from her own accusations. "Oh, well, itwas at a masquerade party, " she acknowledged generously, "and Isuppose you go to a great many masquerades. "

Heaping up her hair like so much molten copper into the hood of hercloak, and trying desperately to snare all the wild, escaping tendrilswith the softer mesh of her veil, she reached out a free hand at lastand opened the door just a crack. 

"And to give you something to think about for the sixth day andnight, " she resumed suddenly, with the same strange little glint inher eyes, "to give you something to think about the sixth day, I'lltell you that I really was hungry--when I asked you for your toast. Ihaven't had anything to eat to-day; and--"

[Illustration: "What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair]

Before she could finish the sentence Stanton had sprung from hischair, and stood trying to reason out madly whether one single morestride would catch her, or lose her. 

"And as for something for you to think about the seventh day andnight, " she gasped hurriedly. Already the door had opened to her handand her little figure stood silhouetted darkly against the bright, yellow-lighted hallway, "here's something for you to think about for_twenty_-seven days and nights!" Wildly her little hands wentclutching at the woodwork. "I didn't know you were engaged to bemarried, " she cried out passionately, "and I _loved_ you--_loved_you--_loved_ you!"

Then in a flash she was gone. 

IX

With absolute finality the big door banged behind her. A minute laterthe street door, four flights down, rang out in jarring reverberation. A minute after that it seemed as though every door in every house onthe street slammed shrilly. Then the charred fire-log sagged down intothe ashes with a sad, puffing sigh. Then a whole row of books on aloosely packed shelf toppled over on each other with soft jocoseslaps. 

Crawling back into his Morris chair with every bone in his body achinglike a magnetized wire-skeleton charged with pain, Stanton collapsedagain into his pillows and sat staring--staring into the dying fire. Nine o'clock rang out dully from the nearest church spire; teno'clock, eleven o'clock followed in turn with monotonous, chiminginsistency. Gradually the relaxing steam-radiators began to grunt andgrumble into a chill quietude. Gradually along the bare, bleakstretches of unrugged floor little cold draughts of air came creepingexploringly to his feet. 

And still he sat staring--staring into the fast graying ashes. 

"Oh, Glory! Glory!" he said. "Think what it would mean if all thatwonderful imagination were turned loose upon just one fellow! Even ifshe didn't love you, think how she'd play the game! And if she didlove you--Oh, lordy; Lordy! LORDY!"

Towards midnight, to ease the melancholy smell of the dying lamp, hedrew reluctantly forth from his deepest blanket-wrapper pocket thelittle knotted handkerchief that encased the still-treasured handfulof fragrant fir-balsam, and bending groaningly forward in his chairsifted the brittle, pungent needles into the face of the one glowingember that survived. Instantly in a single dazzling flash of flame thetangible forest symbol vanished in intangible fragrance. But along thehollow of his hand, --across the edge of his sleeve, --up from theragged pile of books and papers, --out from the farthest, remotestcorners of the room, lurked the unutterable, undestroyable sweetnessof all forests since the world was made. 

Almost with a sob in his throat Stanton turned again to the box ofletters on his table. 

By dawn the feverish, excited sleeplessness in his brain had drivenhim on and on to one last, supremely fantastic impulse. Writing toCornelia he told her bluntly, frankly, "DEAR CORNELIA:

 "When I asked you to marry me, you made me promise very solemnly at the time that if I ever changed my mind regarding you I would surely tell you. And I laughed at you. Do you remember? But you were right, it seems, and I was wrong. For I believe that I have changed my mind. That is:--I don't know how to express it exactly, but it has been made very, very plain to me lately that I do not by any manner of means love you as little as you need to be loved. 

 "In all sincerity, "CARL. "

To which surprising communication Cornelia answered immediately; butthe 'immediately' involved a week's almost maddening interim, "DEAR CARL:

 "Neither mother nor I can make any sense whatsoever out of your note. By any possible chance was it meant to be a joke? You say you do not love me 'as little' as I need to be loved. You mean 'as much', don't you? Carl, what do you mean?"

Laboriously, with the full prospect of yet another week's agonizingstrain and suspense, Stanton wrote again to Cornelia. 

 "DEAR CORNELIA:

 "No, I meant 'as little' as you need to be loved. I have no adequate explanation to make. I have no adequate apology to offer. I don't think anything. I don't hope anything. All I know is that I suddenly believe positively that our engagement is a mistake. Certainly I am neither giving you all that I am capable of giving you, nor yet receiving from you all that I am capable of receiving. Just this fact should decide the matter I think. 

 "CARL. "

Cornelia did not wait to write an answer to this. She telegraphedinstead. The message even in the telegraph operator's handwritinglooked a little nervous. 

"Do you mean that you are tired of it?" she asked quite boldly. 

With miserable perplexity Stanton wired back. "No, I couldn't exactlysay that I was tired of it. "

Cornelia's answer to that was fluttering in his hands within twelvehours. 

"Do you mean that there is someone else?" The words fairly tickedthemselves off the yellow page. 

It was twenty-four hours before Stanton made up his mind just what toreply. Then, "No, I couldn't exactly say there is anybody else, " heconfessed wretchedly. 

Cornelia's mother answered this time. The telegram fairly rustled withsarcasm. "You don't seem to be very sure about anything, " saidCornelia's mother. 

Somehow these words brought the first cheerful smile to his lips. 

"No, you're quite right. I'm not at all sure about anything, " he wiredalmost gleefully in return, wiping his pen with delicious joy on theedge of the clean white bed-spread. 

Then because it is really very dangerous for over-wrought people totry to make any noise like laughter, a great choking, bitter sobcaught him up suddenly, and sent his face burrowing down like anight-scared child into the safe, soft, feathery depths of hispillow--where, with his knuckles ground so hard into his eyes that allhis tears were turned to stars, there came to him very, very slowly, so slowly in fact that it did not alarm him at all, the strange, electrifying vision of the one fact on earth that he _was_ sure of: alittle keen, luminous, brown-eyed face with a look in it, and a lookfor him only--so help him God!--such as he had never seen on the faceof any other woman since the world was made. Was it possible?--was itreally possible? Suddenly his whole heart seemed to irradiate lightand color and music and sweet smelling things. 

[Illustration: Cornelia's mother answered this time]

"Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly!" he shouted. "I want _you_! I want _you_!"

In the strange, lonesome days that followed, neither burlyflesh-and-blood Doctor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped noisily overthe threshold or slid thuddingly through the letter-slide. 

No one apparently was ever coming to see Stanton again unless actuallycompelled to do so. Even the laundryman seemed to have skipped hisusual day; and twice in succession the morning paper had mostannoyingly failed to appear. Certainly neither the boldest privateinquiry nor the most delicately worded public advertisement had provedable to discover the whereabouts of "Molly Make-Believe, " much lesssucceeded in bringing her back. But the Doctor, at least, could besummoned by ordinary telephone, and Cornelia and her mother wouldsurely be moving North eventually, whether Stanton's last messagehastened their movements or not. 

In subsequent experience it seemed to take two telephone messages toproduce the Doctor. A trifle coolly, a trifle distantly, more than atrifle disapprovingly, he appeared at last and stared dully atStanton's astonishing booted-and-coated progress towards health. 

"Always glad to serve you--professionally, " murmured the Doctor withan undeniably definite accent on the word 'professionally'. 

"Oh, cut it out!" quoted Stanton emphatically. "What in creation areyou so stuffy about?"

"Well, really, " growled the Doctor, "considering the deception youpractised on me--"

"Considering nothing!" shouted Stanton. "On my word of honor, I tellyou I never consciously, in all my life before, ever--ever--set eyesupon that wonderful little girl, until that evening! I never knew thatshe even existed! I never knew! I tell you I never knew--_anything_!"

As limply as any stout man could sink into a chair, the Doctor sankinto the seat nearest him. 

"Tell me instantly all about it, " he gasped. 

"There are only two things to tell, " said Stanton quite blithely. "Andthe first thing is what I've already stated, on my honor, that theevening we speak of was actually and positively the first time I eversaw the girl; and the second thing is, that equally upon my honor, Ido not intend to let it remain--the last time!"

"But Cornelia?" cried the Doctor. "What about Cornelia?"

Almost half the sparkle faded from Stanton's eyes. 

"Cornelia and I have annulled our engagement, " he said very quietly. Then with more vehemence, "Oh, you old dry-bones, don't you worryabout Cornelia! I'll look out for Cornelia. Cornelia isn't going toget hurt. I tell you I've figured and reasoned it all out very, verycarefully; and I can see now, quite plainly, that Cornelia neverreally loved me at all--else she wouldn't have dropped me soaccidentally through her fingers. Why, there never was even the ghostof a clutch in Cornelia's fingers. "

"But you loved _her_, " persisted the Doctor scowlingly. 

It was hard, just that second, for Stanton to lift his troubled eyesto the Doctor's face. But he did lift them and he lifted them verysquarely and steadily. 

"Yes, I think I did--love Cornelia, " he acknowledged frankly. "Thevery first time that I saw her I said to myself. 'Here is the end ofmy journey, ' but I seem to have found out suddenly that the mere factof loving a woman does not necessarily prove her that much coveted'journey's end. ' I don't know exactly how to express it, indeed I feelbeastly clumsy about expressing it, but somehow it seems as though itwere Cornelia herself who had proved herself, perfectly amiably, no'journey's end' after all, but only a way station not equipped toreceive my particular kind of a permanent guest. It isn't that Iwanted any grand fixings. Oh, can't you understand that I'm notfinding any fault with Cornelia. There never was any slightestpretence about Cornelia. She never, never even in the first place, made any possible effort to attract me. Can't you see that Cornelia_looks_ to me to-day exactly the way that she looked to me in thefirst place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a traveler, you know, cannot dally indefinitely to feed his eyes on even the most wonderfulview while all his precious lifelong companions, --his whims, hishobbies, his cravings, his yearnings, --are crouching starved andunwelcome outside the door. 

"And I can't even flatter myself, " he added wryly; "I can't evenflatter myself that my--going is going to inconvenience Cornelia inthe slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even theremotest perceptible difference in her daily routine. Anyway--" hefinished more lightly, "when you come right down to 'mating', or'homing', or 'belonging', or whatever you choose to call it, it seemsto be written in the stars that plans or no plans, preferences or nopreferences, initiatives or no initiatives, we belong to those--andto those only, hang it all!--who happen to love _us_ most!"

Fairly jumping from his chair the Doctor snatched hold of Stanton'sshoulder. 

"Who happen to love _us_ most?" he repeated wildly. "Love _us_? _us_?For heaven's sake, who's loving you _now_?"

Utterly irrelevantly, Stanton brushed him aside, and began to rummageanxiously among the books on his table. 

"Do you know much about Vermont?" he asked suddenly. "It's funny, butalmost nobody seems to know anything about Vermont. It's a darned goodstate, too, and I can't imagine why all the geographies neglect itso. " Idly his finger seemed to catch in a half open pamphlet, and hebent down casually to straighten out the page. "Area in squaremiles--9, 565, " he read aloud musingly. "Principal products--hay, oats, maple-sugar--" Suddenly he threw down the pamphlet and flunghimself into the nearest chair and began to laugh. "Maple-sugar?" heejaculated. "Maple-sugar? Oh, glory! And I suppose there are somepeople who think that maple-sugar is the sweetest thing that ever cameout of Vermont!"

The Doctor started to give him some fresh advice--but left him abromide instead. 

X

Though the ensuing interview with Cornelia and her mother began quiteas coolly as the interview with the Doctor, it did not happen to endeven in hysterical laughter. 

It was just two days after the Doctor's hurried exit that Stantonreceived a formal, starchy little note from Cornelia's mothernotifying him of their return. 

Except for an experimental, somewhat wobbly-kneed journey or two tothe edge of the Public Garden he had made no attempts as yet to resumeany outdoor life, yet for sundry personal reasons of his own he didnot feel over-anxious to postpone the necessary meeting. In theimmediate emergency at hand strong courage was infinitely more of anasset than strong knees. Filling his suitcase at once with all theexplanatory evidence that he could carry, he proceeded on cab-wheelsto Cornelia's grimly dignified residence. The street lamps were justbeginning to be lighted when he arrived. 

As the butler ushered him gravely into the beautiful drawing room herealized with a horrid sinking of the heart that Cornelia and hermother were already sitting there waiting for him with a dreadfultight lipped expression on their faces which seemed to suggest thatthough he was already fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment theyhad been waiting for him there since early dawn. 

The drawing room itself was deliciously familiar to him;crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt pictureframes and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies andtheater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic thresholdand fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting forthe silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcaseclutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments couldhave felt more grotesquely out of his element. 

Indolently Cornelia's mother lifted her lorgnette and gazed at himskeptically from the spot just behind his left ear where the barberhad clipped him too short, to the edge of his right heel that thebootblack had neglected to polish. Apparently she did not even see thesuitcase but, "Oh, are you leaving town?" she asked icily. 

Only by the utmost tact on his part did he finally succeed inestablishing tête-à-tête relations with Cornelia herself; and eventhen if the house had been a tower ten stories high, Cornelia'smother, rustling up the stairs, could not have swished her skirts anymore definitely like a hissing snake. 

In absolute dumbness Stanton and Cornelia sat listening until thehorrid sound died away. Then, and then only, did Cornelia cross theroom to Stanton's side and proffer him her hand. The hand was verycold, and the manner of offering it was very cold, but Stanton wasquite man enough to realize that this special temperature was purely amatter of physical nervousness rather than of mental intention. 

Slipping naturally into the most conventional groove either of word ordeed, Cornelia eyed the suitcase inquisitively. 

"What are you doing?" she asked thoughtlessly. "Returning mypresents?"

"You never gave me any presents!" said Stanton cheerfully. 

"Why, didn't I?" murmured Cornelia slowly. Around her strained mouth asmile began to flicker faintly. "Is that why you broke it off?" sheasked flippantly. 

"Yes, partly, " laughed Stanton. 

Then Cornelia laughed a little bit, too. 

After this Stanton lost no possible time in getting down to facts. 

Stooping over from his chair exactly after the manner of peddlers whomhe had seen in other people's houses, he unbuckled the straps of hissuitcase, and turned the cover backward on the floor. 

Cornelia followed every movement of his hand with vaguely perplexedblue eyes. 

"Surely, " said Stanton, "this is the weirdest combination ofcircumstances that ever happened to a man and a girl--or rather, Ishould say, to a man and two girls. " Quite accustomed as he now was tothe general effect on himself of the whole unique adventure with theSerial-Letter Co. His heart could not help giving a little extra jumpon this, the verge of the astonishing revelation that he was about tomake to Cornelia. "Here, " he stammered, a tiny bit out of breath, "here is the small, thin, tissue-paper circular that you sent me fromthe Serial-Letter Co. With your advice to subscribe, and there--"pointing earnestly to the teeming suitcase, --"there are the minorresults of--having taken your advice. "

In Cornelia's face the well-groomed expression showed sudden signs ofimmediate disorganization. 

Snatching the circular out of his hand she read it hurriedly, once, twice, three times. Then kneeling cautiously down on the floor withall the dignity that characterized every movement of her body, shebegan to poke here and there into the contents of the suitcase. 

[Illustration: He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned thecover backward on the floor]

"The 'minor results'?" she asked soberly. 

"Why yes, " said Stanton. "There were several things I didn't have roomto bring. There was a blanket-wrapper. And there was a--girl, andthere was a--"

Cornelia's blonde eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "A girl--whom youdidn't know at all--sent you a blanket-wrapper?" she whispered. 

"Yes!" smiled Stanton. "You see no girl whom I knew--very well--seemedto care a hang whether I froze to death or not. "

"O--h, " said Cornelia very, very slowly, "O--h. " Her eyes had astrange, new puzzled expression in them like the expression of aperson who was trying to look outward and think inward at the sametime. 

"But you mustn't be so critical and haughty about it all, " protestedStanton, "when I'm really trying so hard to explain everythingperfectly honestly to you--so that you'll understand exactly how ithappened. "

"I should like very much to be able to understand exactly how ithappened, " mused Cornelia. 

Gingerly she approached in succession the roll of sample wall-paper, the maps, the time-tables, the books, the little silver porringer, theintimate-looking scrap of unfinished fancy-work. One by one Stantonexplained them to her, visualizing by eager phrase or whimsicalgesture the particularly lonesome and susceptible conditions underwhich each gift had happened to arrive. 

At the great pile of letters Cornelia's hand faltered a trifle. 

"How many did I write you?" she asked with real curiosity. 

"Five thin ones, and a postal-card, " said Stanton almostapologetically. 

Choosing the fattest looking letter that she could find, Corneliatoyed with the envelope for a second. "Would it be all right for me toread one?" she asked doubtfully. 

"Why, yes, " said Stanton. "I think you might read one. "

After a few minutes she laid down the letter without any comment. 

"Would it be all right for me to read another?" she questioned. 

"Why, yes, " cried Stanton. "Let's read them all. Let's read themtogether. Only, of course, we must read them in order. "

Almost tenderly he picked them up and sorted them out according totheir dates. "Of course, " he explained very earnestly, "of course Iwouldn't think of showing these letters to any one ordinarily; butafter all, these particular letters represent only a mere businessproposition, and certainly this particular situation must justify onein making extraordinary exceptions. "

One by one he perused the letters hastily and handed them over toCornelia for her more careful inspection. No single associate detailof time or circumstance seemed to have eluded his astonishing memory. Letter by letter, page by page he annotated: "That was the week youdidn't write at all, " or "This was the stormy, agonizing, God-forsakennight when I didn't care whether I lived or died, " or "It was justabout that time, you know, that you snubbed me for being scared aboutyour swimming stunt. "

Breathless in the midst of her reading Cornelia looked up and facedhim squarely. "How could any girl--write all that nonsense?" shegasped. 

It wasn't so much what Stanton answered, as the expression in his eyesthat really startled Cornelia. 

"Nonsense?" he quoted deliberatingly. "But I like it, " he said. "It'sexactly what I like. "

"But I couldn't possibly have given you anything like--that, "stammered Cornelia. 

"No, I know you couldn't, " said Stanton very gently. 

For an instant Cornelia turned and stared a bit resentfully into hisface. Then suddenly the very gentleness of his smile ignited a littleanswering smile on her lips. 

"Oh, you mean, " she asked with unmistakable relief; "oh, you mean thatreally after all it wasn't your letter that jilted me, but mytemperament that jilted you?"

"Exactly, " said Stanton. 

Cornelia's whole somber face flamed suddenly into unmistakableradiance. 

"Oh, that puts an entirely different light upon the matter, " sheexclaimed. "Oh, now it doesn't hurt at all!"

Rustling to her feet, she began to smooth the scowly-looking wrinklesout of her skirt with long even strokes of her bright-jeweled hands. 

"I think I'm really beginning to understand, " she said pleasantly. "And truly, absurd as it sounds to say it, I honestly believe that Icare more for you this moment than I ever cared before, but--"glancing with acute dismay at the cluttered suitcase on the floor, "but I wouldn't marry you now, if we could live in the finest asylumin the land!"

Shrugging his shoulders with mirthful appreciation Stanton proceededthen and there to re-pack his treasures and end the interview. 

Just at the edge of the threshold Cornelia's voice called him back. 

"Carl, " she protested, "you are looking rather sick. I hope you aregoing straight home. "

"No, I'm not going straight home, " said Stanton bluntly. "But here'shoping that the 'longest way round' will prove even yet the veryshortest possible route to the particular home that, as yet, doesn'teven exist. I'm going hunting, Cornelia, hunting for MollyMake-Believe; and what's more, I'm going to find her if it takes meall the rest of my natural life!"

XI

Driving downtown again with every thought in his head, every plan, every purpose, hurtling around and around in absolute chaos, hisroving eyes lit casually upon the huge sign of a detective bureau thatloomed across the street. White as a sheet with the sudden newdetermination that came to him, and trembling miserably with the verystrength of the determination warring against the weakness and fatigueof his body, he dismissed his cab and went climbing up the firstnarrow, dingy stairway that seemed most liable to connect with thebrain behind the sign-board. 

It was almost bed-time before he came down the stairs again, yet, "Ithink her name is Meredith, and I think she's gone to Vermont, andshe has the most wonderful head of mahogany-colored hair that I eversaw in my life, " were the only definite clues that he had been able tocontribute to the cause. 

In the slow, lagging week that followed, Stanton did not find himselfat all pleased with the particular steps which he had apparently beenobliged to take in order to ferret out Molly's real name and her realcity address, but the actual audacity of the situation did notactually reach its climax until the gentle little quarry had beenliterally tracked to Vermont with detectives fairly baying on hertrail like the melodramatic bloodhounds that pursue "Eliza" across theice. 

"Red-headed party found at Woodstock, " the valiant sleuth had wiredwith unusual delicacy and caution. 

"Denies acquaintance, Boston, everything, positively refusesinterview, temper very bad, sure it's the party, " the second messagehad come. 

The very next northward-bound train found Stanton fretting theinterminable hours away between Boston and Woodstock. Across thesparkling snow-smothered landscape his straining eyes went plowing on totheir unknown destination. Sometimes the engine pounded louder than hisheart. Sometimes he could not even seem to hear the grinding of thebrakes above the dreadful throb-throb of his temples. Sometimes inhorrid, shuddering chills he huddled into his great fur-coat and cursedthe porter for having a disposition like a polar bear. Sometimes almostgasping for breath he went out and stood on the bleak rear platform ofthe last car and watched the pleasant, ice-cold rails go speeding backto Boston. All along the journey little absolutely unnecessary villageskept bobbing up to impede the progress of the train. All along thejourney innumerable little empty railroad-stations, barren as bellsrobbed of their own tongues, seemed to lie waiting--waiting for thenoisy engine-tongue to clang them into temporary noise and life. 

Was his quest really almost at an end? Was it--was it? A thousandvague apprehensions tortured through his mind. 

And then, all of a sudden, in the early, brisk winter twilight, Woodstock--happened!

Climbing out of the train Stanton stood for a second rubbing his eyesat the final abruptness and unreality of it all. Woodstock! What wasit going to mean to him? Woodstock!

Everybody else on the platform seemed to be accepting the astonishinggeographical fact with perfect simplicity. Already along the edge ofthe platform the quaint, old-fashioned yellow stage-coaches set onrunners were fast filling up with utterly serene passengers. 

A jog at his elbow made him turn quickly, and he found himself gazinginto the detective's not ungenial face. 

"Say, " said the detective, "were you going up to the hotel first? Wellyou'd better not. You'd better not lose any time. She's leaving townin the morning. " It was beyond human nature for the detective man notto nudge Stanton once in the ribs. "Say, " he grinned, "you sure hadbetter go easy, and not send in your name or anything. " His grinbroadened suddenly in a laugh. "Say, " he confided, "once in a magazineI read something about a lady's 'piquant animosity'. That's her! And_cute_? Oh, my!"

Five minutes later, Stanton found himself lolling back in thequaintest, brightest, most pumpkin-colored coach of all, gliding withalmost magical smoothness through the snow-glazed streets of thelittle narrow, valley-town. 

"The Meredith homestead?" the driver had queried. "Oh, yes. All right;but it's quite a journey. Don't get discouraged. "

A sense of discouragement regarding long distances was just at thatmoment the most remote sensation in Stanton's sensibilities. If therailroad journey had seemed unhappily drawn out, the sleigh-ridereversed the emotion to the point of almost telescopic calamity: astingy, transient vista of village lights; a brief, narrow, hill-bordered road that looked for all the world like the aisle of atoy-shop, flanked on either side by high-reaching shelves whereminiature house-lights twinkled cunningly; a sudden stumble of hoofsinto a less-traveled snow-path, and then, absolutely unavoidable, absolutely unescapable, an old, white colonial house with its greatsolemn elm trees stretching out their long arms protectingly allaround and about it after the blessed habit of a hundred years. 

Nervously, and yet almost reverently, Stanton went crunching up thesnowy path to the door, knocked resonantly with a slim, much worn oldbrass knocker, and was admitted promptly and hospitably by "Mrs. Meredith" herself--Molly's grandmother evidently, and such a darlinglittle grandmother, small, like Molly; quick, like Molly; even young, like Molly, she appeared to be. Simple, sincere, and oh, socomfortable--like the fine old mahogany furniture and the dull-shiningpewter, and the flickering firelight, that seemed to be everywhere. 

"Good old stuff!" was Stanton's immediate silent comment on everythingin sight. 

It was perfectly evident that the little old lady knew nothingwhatsoever about Stanton, but it was equally evident that shesuspected him of being neither a highwayman nor a book agent, and wasreally sincerely sorry that Molly had "a headache" and would be unableto see him. 

"But I've come so far, " persisted Stanton. "All the way from Boston. Is she very ill? Has she been ill long?"

The little old lady's mind ignored the questions but clung a triflenervously to the word Boston. 

"Boston?" her sweet voice quavered. "Boston? Why you look sonice--surely you're not that mysterious man who has been annoyingMollie so dreadfully these past few days. I told her no good wouldever come of her going to the city. "

"Annoying Molly?" cried Stanton. "Annoying _my_ Molly? I? Why, it'sto prevent anybody in the whole wide world from ever annoying heragain about--anything, that I've come here now!" he persisted rashly. "And don't you see--we had a little misunderstanding and--"

Into the little old lady's ivory cheek crept a small, bright, blush-spot. 

"Oh, you had a little misunderstanding, " she repeated softly. "Alittle quarrel? Oh, is that why Molly has been crying so much eversince she came home?"

Very gently she reached out her tiny, blue-veined hand, and turnedStanton's big body around so that the lamp-light smote him squarely onhis face. 

"Are you a good boy?" she asked. "Are you good enough for--my--littleMolly?"

Impulsively Stanton grabbed her small hands in his big ones, andraised them very tenderly to his lips. 

[Illustration: "Are you a good boy?" she asked]

"Oh, little Molly's little grandmother, " he said; "nobody on the faceof this snow-covered earth is good enough for your Molly, but won'tyou give me a chance? Couldn't you please give me a chance? Now--thisminute? Is she so very ill?"

"No, she's not so very ill, that is, she's not sick in bed, " mused theold lady waveringly. "She's well enough to be sitting up in her bigchair in front of her open fire. "

"Big chair--open fire?" quizzed Stanton. "Then, are there two chairs?"he asked casually. 

"Why, yes, " answered the little-grandmother in surprise. 

"And a mantelpiece with a clock on it?" he probed. 

The little-grandmother's eyes opened wide and blue with astonishment. 

"Yes, " she said, "but the clock hasn't gone for forty years!"

"Oh, great!" exclaimed Stanton. "Then won't you please--please--I tellyou it's a case of life or death--won't you _please_ go right upstairsand sit down in that extra big chair--and not say a word or anythingbut just wait till I come? And of course, " he said, "it wouldn't begood for you to run upstairs, but if you could hurry just a little Ishould be _so_ much obliged. "

As soon as he dared, he followed cautiously up the unfamiliar stairs, and peered inquisitively through the illuminating crack of a looselyclosed door. 

The grandmother as he remembered her was dressed in some funny sort ofa dullish purple, but peeping out from the edge of one of the chairshe caught an unmistakable flutter of blue. 

Catching his breath he tapped gently on the woodwork. 

Round the big winged arm of the chair a wonderful, bright aureole ofhair showed suddenly. 

"Come in, " faltered Molly's perplexed voice. 

All muffled up in his great fur-coat he pushed the door wide open andentered boldly. 

"It's only Carl, " he said. "Am I interrupting you?"

The really dreadful collapsed expression on Molly's face Stanton didnot appear to notice at all. He merely walked over to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows on the little cleared space in front of theclock, stood staring fixedly at the time-piece which had not changedits quarter-of-three expression for forty years. 

"It's almost half-past seven, " he announced pointedly, "and I can staytill just eight o'clock. "

Only the little grandmother smiled. 

Almost immediately: "It's twenty minutes of eight now!" he announcedseverely. 

"My, how time flies!" laughed the little grandmother. 

When he turned around again the little grandmother had fled. 

But Molly did not laugh, as he himself had laughed on that faraway, dreamlike evening in his rooms. Instead of laughter, two great tearswelled up in her eyes and glistened slowly down her flushing cheeks. 

"What if this old clock hasn't moved a minute in forty years?"whispered Stanton passionately, "it's such a _stingy_ little time toeight o'clock--even if the hands never get there!"

Then turning suddenly to Molly he held out his great strong arms toher. 

"Oh, Molly, Molly!" he cried out beseechingly, "I love you! And I'mfree to love you! Won't you please come to me?"

[Illustration: "It's only Carl, " he said]

Sliding very cautiously out of the big, deep chair, Molly came walkinghesitatingly towards him. Like a little wraith miraculously tintedwith bronze and blue she stopped and faced him piteously for a second. 

Then suddenly she made a little wild rush into his arms and burrowedher small frightened face in his shoulder. 

"Oh, Carl, Sweetheart!" she cried. "I can really love you now? Loveyou, Carl--love you! And not have to be just Molly Make-Believing anymore!"

THE END.