The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was not in it the same day with your brother’s friend! I do assure you. And anyhow—even if he still has brains—his writing apparatus is all done up in arnica, so there you are! But do not allow me to alarm you unduly! When all’s said and done, they’re not so badly off physically. Hair and ribs are mere vanities, anyhow, and we’re here to-day and gone to-morrow! Something much worse than disfigurements and broken bones has sprung forth from chaos, and has almost stared them out of countenance since. It is the wolf that is at the door, and the howling and prowling of their particular wolf is not to be sneezed at, let me tell you. To put a modern political face upon an ancient Greek fable, the wolf in their case symbolizes the bitter question of whose roof is going to roof them when they get out of the plaster casts that are bed and board to them just at present. Where are they to go? All those which used to be open to them are suddenly shut tight. They’ve both been expelled, and both been disinherited. If I was inclined to look on the blue side of the blanket, I should certainly feel that they were playing in very tough luck. Burnett, of course, can come to you, and his soul is full of the wish to bring his fellow-fright along with him. Which wish of his is the gist of my epistle. Can he bring him? He wants to know before he broaches the proposition. I’m to be skinned alive if Jack ever learns that such a plea was made, so I beg you whatever other rash acts you see fit to commit during your meteoric flight across my plane of existence, don’t ever give me away. Firstly, because if I ever get a chance to do so, I’m positive that I should want to cling to you as the mistletoe does to the oak, and could not bear to be given away; and secondly, because I’m so attached to my own skin that I should really suffer pain if it was taken from me by force. Bob wants you to think it over, and let him know as to the whats and whens by return mail. You are so inspiring that I could write you all day, but those relics of what once was, but alas! will never be again, need to be rolled up afresh in absorbent cotton, and so I must nail my Red Cross on to my left arm, and get down to business. If you saw how useful I am to your brother, you’d thank his lucky stars that I came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man above me toed in. Isn’t it curious to think that if he’d worn braces in early youth my ear would be all right now. Behold me at your feet. Respectfully yours, HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL. When Mrs. Rosscott had finished the letter she looked across at her caller, and said: “You’ve read this, haven’t you?”