"So you did," was the soothing reply, "but I strive to please, and I thought from your manner that you hoped to astonish me with the news. So she's really and truly engaged. Well, I'm glad of it. Fred's a good fellow in spite of the fact that he has arranged to be a brother-in-law to me when he knows that I hate brothers-in-law; and Dolly's a great girl." "Dolly's a dear, and I only hope he's half good enough for her. But that is only part of the news in the letter." Her husband took another muffin and looked interested. "She wants to come and spend a year with us; if we can take her, father and mother will go abroad. Her idea is to learn how to keep house. Listen to what she says: "'Dearest Mary:-- "'I don't suppose you will be exactly amazed when I tell you that Fred and I are engaged, for when I wrote you last I realized that you must know what was in the air. And I don't suppose I need say that we are the two happiest people in the world and that Fred is the dearest--'" "Skip all that," pleaded Mr. Thorne. "Well, I will; but she goes on to say that the firm Fred is with has offered him a better salary than he has now, provided he will go to South America for a year and really learn the business. I'll begin there: "'That means that we can get married as soon as he comes back, for then he will have as much as eighteen hundred a year, certainly. But even so, with rents so high and food going up daily as the papers say it is, I am sure we shall find it not too easy to make both ends meet, especially as I strongly suspect that years in an expensive apartment hotel do not exactly fit one for living on a little. "'All this brings me to the point of my letter, which is: won't you please let me come and live with you for a year and learn how to manage? That would be a cool proposition, I am aware, but for certain mitigating circumstances which I hasten to mention.