[Evening of the same day] POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN: This is a night I have long waited for and worked for. You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for two--and for more than two--for our little ones. When I married you, I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats. But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your lover. Name the day when I can be both. Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day of next Spring, then--so far away but nearer than any other Spring during these impatient years. Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover, BEN DOOLITTLE. Roses to you. POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE _June 24._ Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN! My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my pillow. POLLY. BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES _June 26._ It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day of your marriage to me. To _me_, tell him! Then let him take himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty small animal. BEN. POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE _June 27._ Our engagement has only made him more determined. He persists in visiting me. His loyalty is touching. Suppose the next time he comes I arrange for you to come. Your meeting him here might have the desired effect. POLLY BOLES. BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES _June 28._ It would certainly have the desired effect, but perhaps not exactly the effect he desires. Madam, would you wish to see the nerve filaments of your fond specialist scattered over your carpet as his life's deplorable arcana? No, Polly, not that! Make this suggestion to him: that in order to give him a chance to be near you--but not too near--you do offer him for the first year after our marriage--only one year, mind you--you do offer him, with my consent and at a good salary, the position of our furnace-man, since he so loves to warm himself with our fires. It would enable him to keep up his habit of getting down on his knees and puffing for you.