We found Lady Muriel alone, the Earl having gone out to make a call, and at once resumed old terms of intimacy, in the shady arbour where the tea-things seemed to be always waiting. The only novelty in the arrangements (one which Lady Muriel seemed to regard as _entirely_ a matter of course), was that two of the chairs were placed _quite_ close together, side by side. Strange to say, _I_ was not invited to occupy _either_ of them! “We have been arranging, as we came along, about letter-writing,” Arthur began. “He will want to know how we’re enjoying our Swiss tour: and of course we must pretend we _are_?” “Of course,” she meekly assented. “And the skeleton-in-the-cupboard——” I suggested. “—is always a difficulty,” she quickly put in, “when you’re traveling about, and when there are no cupboards in the hotels. However, _ours_ is a _very_ portable one; and will be neatly packed, in a nice leather case——” “But please don’t think about _writing_,” I said, “when you’ve anything more attractive on hand. I delight in _reading_ letters, but I know well how tiring it is to _write_ them.” “It _is_, sometimes,” Arthur assented. “For instance, when you’re very shy of the person you have to write to.” “Does that show itself in the _letter_?” Lady Muriel enquired. “Of course, when I hear any one _talking_—_you_, for instance—I can see how _desperately_ shy he is! But can you see that in a _letter_?” “Well, of course, when you hear any one talk _fluently_—_you_, for instance—you can see how desperately _un_-shy she is—not to say saucy! But the shyest and most intermittent talker must _seem_ fluent in letter-writing. He may have taken half-an-hour to _compose_ his second sentence; but there it is, close after the first!” “Then letters don’t express all that they _might_ express?” “That’s merely because our system of letter-writing is incomplete. A shy writer _ought_ to be able to show that he is so. Why shouldn’t he make _pauses_ in writing, just as he would do in speaking? He might leave blank spaces—say half a page at a time. And a _very_ shy girl—if there _is_ such a thing—might write a sentence on the _first_ sheet of her letter—then put in a couple of _blank_ sheets—then a sentence on the _fourth_ sheet: and so on.” “I quite foresee that _we_—I mean this clever little boy and myself—” Lady Muriel said to me, evidently with the kind wish to bring me into the conversation, “—are going to become famous—of course all our inventions are common property now—for a new Code of Rules for Letter-writing! Please invent some more, little boy!” “Well, another thing _greatly_ needed, little girl, is some way of expressing that we _don’t_ mean anything.” “Explain yourself, little boy! Surely _you_ can find no difficulty in expressing a _total_ absence of meaning?”