"It will be what they call a newsy letter, of course. I do wish that Avis would not write to me as if she were under oath to tell the entire truth. She communicates so many things which actually happened that it reads like a 'special correspondent' in some country town writing for a Sunday morning's paper,--and with, to a moral certainty, the word 'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too busy expressing my adoration for you to be exposed to such inharmonious jars." Then I wrote my dithyrambs and sealed them. Subsequently I poised the unopened letter between my fingers. "But remember that if she were here to _say_ all this to you, your pulses would be pounding like the pistons of an excited locomotive! Nature, you are a jade! I console myself with the reflection that it is frequently the gift of facile writing which makes the co-respondent, --but I _do_ wish you were not such a hazardous matchmaker. Oh, well! there was no pleasant way of getting out of it, and that particular Rubicon is miles behind." I slit the envelope. I read the letter through again, with redoubling interest, and presently began to laugh. "So she begins to fear we have been somewhat hasty, asks a little time for reconsideration of her precise sentiment toward me, and feels meanwhile in honour bound to release me from our engagement! Yet if upon mature deliberation--eh, oh, yes! twaddle! _and_ commonplace! and dashed, of course, with a jigger of Scriptural quotation!" I paused to whistle. "There is strange milk in this cocoanut, could I but discern its nature." I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. Wrote Avis: DEAR ROBERT: Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no outsiders. So good bye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your better self. God bless you allways. Your sincere friend, AVIS M. BEECHINOR I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. "The little slut!"