With her clothes off and three pillows behind her back, and a cigarette between her lips, she picked up the book she had borrowed. There had been a certain degree of method in her selection. It was an old, loose-backed, green-covered copy of “Les Misérables,” one of her long and growing list of “duty books,” that is to say, books she ought to have read years ago and had not. This happened also to belong to the classification of “school-piece” books. An English reader had contained a selection from it, and she had once resolved, in a fit of rebellion against the academic, never to read any books that yielded school pieces for the boredom of the young. Later the conscience of a cultivated adult had forced her to recant, and her _index librorum prohibitorum_ had become an index obligatory. The book in her hand was a long one. She would just about finish it by the time Hal came back, and that would be killing two birds with one stone. She opened it at random and as she removed her thumbs the pages leaped back to a marked place, occupied by a letter. She picked it up. It was an old and faded letter, addressed to “Mrs. Ellen Williams, 21 Trezevant Place.” That was Ellen, the cook, of course. She smiled a little at the thought of Ellen reading a monstrous book like this. She had never seen Ellen read anything except a recipe or a label. But, of course, humble people did like Hugo. She had read “Notre Dame” and “Ninety-Three.” Moira would have put the letter aside at once to hand it to the servant in the morning had she not noticed two markings on the envelope that strangely interested her. One was the date, just a month after she was born. The other was the inscription on the flap in back, which read as follows: from Miss Moira McCoy, Lutheran Maternity Hospital, 2243 Bismarck Street. Her own name, on a letter almost as old as she was! She laid it down. She ought not to read it, of course. But it certainly was hard to resist knowing what some little Irish girl in the hospital (who made her capital “m’s” with three vertical lines and a horizontal bar across the top) was thinking and doing a month after she was born. Wasn’t there a “statute of limitations” on letters? No letter nearly twenty years old could be private. The lure of romance that lurked in the envelope was too strong. She hastily drew out the folded sheet and read: MY DEAR MRS. WILLIAMS: Just a note to tell you how honoured and tickled I am that you are going to name your little daughter after me. I hope to see her sometime soon, and you also. I am so busy now, but in two or three weeks I could call on my day off, Thursday, if it could be arranged. So you love your new place? I’m so glad. We all miss you and--my pretty little namesake. How proud it makes me. Sincerely your friend, MOIRA McCOY.