‘Thank you so much for your hints from your Domestic Science class. I really got a lot from them. I had an awfully funny time with some bread last week. You see, having once learned how to make it, it was terribly mortifying to mix up a big batch and have it simply refuse to rise. I didn’t want Crit to see it, so I took it out in the backyard and buried it in some sand the plasterers had left there. Crit came home to dinner and went out in the yard to see if his radishes were up and came in much excited: said he had found a new mushroom growth (you remember he was always interested in mushrooms and knew all kinds of edible varieties that we had never heard of). Sure enough there was a brand new variety. That hateful old dough had come up at last! The hot sand had been too much for it and it was rising to beat the band. I was strangely unsympathetic with Crit and his mushroom cult, so he came in to dinner. As soon as Crit went back to work, I went out and covered up the disgraceful failure with a lot more sand, hammered it down well and put a chicken coop on it, determined to get rid of it; but surely murder must be like yeast and it will out. When Crit came back to supper that old leaven had found its way through the cracks under the chicken coop and a little spot was appearing to the side of the sand pile. Crit was awfully excited and began to pull off pieces to send to Washington for the Government to look into the specimens, and I had to give in and tell him the truth. He almost died laughing and decided to send some anyhow, just to see what Uncle Sam would make out of it. The report has not come yet. I have lots more things to tell you about my housekeeping but I must stop now. I am so sorry I can not come home to Sue’s wedding, but it is such an expensive trip out here that I do not see how Crit and I can manage it just now. Of course Crit could not come anyhow as the bridge would surely fall down if he were not here to hold it up, and even if we could afford it I should hate to leave him more than I can tell you. Oh, Molly, he is so precious! We have been married almost a year now and when I was cross about his mushrooms was the nearest we have ever come to a misunderstanding. That is doing pretty well for me who am a born pepper pot. It is all Crit, who is an angel, as I believe I remarked before. Please write to me all about your class reunion, and give my love to that adorable Julia Kean, and also remember me to that nice Professor Green. ‘Your ’special sister, Mildred Brown Rutledge.’” “What a delightful letter and how happy they are,” said the professor, fingering his roll of blue prints with a sad smile. “It was good of her to remember me. Please give her my love when you write.”