Two weeks after Grandma and Hellwig visited us, I got an airmail letter from Grandma. Before I opened it I knew it must contain exciting news, because Grandma wouldn't have sent the letter airmail if she had been completely calm and in full possession of her faculties. Airmail takes about twice as long in getting from Los Angeles to Banning as regular mail does. It is such a short distance between the two cities that the time gained by the speedier flight of the plane is more than lost in the transportation to and from the airports. Grandma's letter began with a burst of enthusiasm. "I'm going to be married! I'm going to be a bride!" it gurgled. "Wagonseller proposed to me. I never see anything like the way he carried on. He had a big diamond ring with him, he said it was his mother's and he said he wanted it to be mine if I'd accept him along with it, 'he did, all right'!" I was a little disappointed in Grandma. After twenty-five years of going with Hellwig, I hadn't thought that a wad of money, a beautiful car and a big diamond could influence her so strongly. I resumed reading the letter. "I told him I wouldn't marry him, though, and Thunderation, how he took on. I thought sure he was going to cry. When he finally got over it and left I hopped on the streetcar and went to see Hellwig. I told him what had happened, and you were right, you little stinkpot. All he was waiting for was for me to say something. So I said it, and, well, plague take it anyway, that's all there is to tell you. Except he was madder'n a wet hen to think Wagonseller'd been after me. The wedding's going to be two weeks from today, and in the meantime he's going to find us a little place in the country and we'll have a garden and raise a few chickens. He's going to retire at last." Grandma was a long time getting her man, but she finally got him. In the same mail with Grandma's joyous airmail letter was a large box with no return address. It bore a Burbank postmark, and I opened it warily. When I had torn off all the wrappings and lifted the cover from the box, several anemic-looking cockroaches struggled out. And in the box was a solid mass of their relatives, who had been less hardy, and were quite dead. A note reposed in the midst of the unsavory mess. It was face up, fortunately, and could be read without being touched. "I thought you might be interested," it said, "to know that Ermintrude had a blessed event. I know that you will give her children a good home. She had quite a litter, didn't she?" The note wasn't signed, but there was no need for it to be. I resolved that I'd never again try to compete with an expert at his own game.