“If Tom were only here to start me,” he thought, as he took up his pen and a sheet of dainty note paper with his monogram in the corner. It was very easy to write “Oakfield, Aug. ——” but what to say next was a puzzler. Finally he wrote: “My dear Irene,” and then stopped and stared at it, with a feeling that it was quite too familiar. He had never called her Irene, and he didn’t know as she was his “dear.” He must think about it. He liked her and he supposed she would be his wife, and in time very dear to him. But now “My dear” was a little too strong with Irene attached to it. Taking another sheet he began: “Miss Irene Burdick,” but that was quite too formal and this second sheet followed the first into the waste basket. He had only one left of that particular kind and could not afford to spoil that. So he practised on a less expensive sheet till he decided that “Dear Miss Burdick,” which meant nothing, as dear was a common mode of expression, would do, and began to write, sweating like rain, weighing every word, and feeling that the hardest work he had ever done was writing that letter, which in a way was intended as a proposal. “Dear Miss Burdick,” he wrote, “I am very sorry for the illness of your brother, which necessitated your leaving so suddenly, just as I was about to speak of something I ought to have spoken of before, and should, but for my natural nervousness or shyness, or whatever you may choose to call it, together with a doubt as to what were your feelings on the subject. Believe me, Miss Burdick, I would not on any account try to persuade you to think favorably of the plan if your heart is not in it. I am aware that you are placed in a very delicate position, which I regret as much as you possibly can.” Here Rex stopped suddenly, with a feeling that it would never do to say that he regretted the relation in which he stood to Irene. He had made a horrid blunder and used up his last sheet of fine note paper. “Oh, for Tom, or somebody,” he groaned, and the somebody came in the person of Colin, who knocked at the door. “Oh, come in, come. I am glad to see you,” Rex said, changing his mind with regard to consulting Colin. “I am writing to Miss Burdick and have spoiled three sheets of my best note paper, and have told her she can not regret the peculiar relations in which we stand to each other more than I do. What do you think of that?” “I think you are an imbecile, or crazy,” Colin said. “I could do better, and I never wrote a love-letter in my life.” “I know you could and I wish you’d write it for me, or make an outline for me to copy. Will you?” Rex said. “Heavens and earth!” Colin replied. “Do you expect an old man like me to dictate your love-letters? Plunge in and say something like this: ‘My dear Irene, I ought to have spoken to you before, but I am such a coward and I did not know how you felt, or if your pulse beat in unison with mine.’”