When he sat down at his desk that night to write to her, his face was rigid at what was before him; it was nearly dawn before the task was finished; letters--long letters, short letters, letters expressing his admiration for her, letters ignoring it, letters about Laura, about the Philippines, about Flora--were written out, torn up, flung into the waste-basket. Then came the brief, blunt truth-telling: Laura had accepted him, and he knew that she, his old pal, would wish them happiness. Of course there was a postscript: she would be their very best friend, because they both thought she was the finest woman they knew. When the letter was addressed and sealed, he went out into the four-o'clock-in-the-morning stillness, and walked over to Payton Street to slip it into the letter-box of the sleeping house. He would not trust it to the mail; he would run no risk of Laura's arriving before the first delivery. Fred mustn't be caught off guard! Then he walked home--glanced at a little suspiciously by an officer on his somnolent beat--about as uncomfortable a young man as ever realized his own happiness in contrast to some one else's unhappiness--for, in spite of his modest disclaimer, he knew that Fred was unhappy: "How would I feel if Laura had refused me? And, of course, Fred is harder hit than a man would be." But, no matter how hard hit she was, thanks to that letter, the next morning, when Laura swore her to secrecy, and said that the bridesmaids' hats would be _dreams_! Fred's upper lip was smilingly stiff. It was just after that that Mrs. Holmes began to say that her granddaughter was "scrawny." CHAPTER XXIII Often, in those weeks before Laura's wedding, Mrs. Payton, working out a puzzle, or playing Canfield on the big rosewood table in the sitting-room, would stop and stare straight before her, with unseeing eyes.... Like a needle working its way through nerveless flesh toward some vital spot, a new emotion, _anger_, was penetrating the routine of her meaningless days. _Laura had cut Freddy out!_ Love for Morty, the dam love, which is the habit of the body and has nothing to do with the intellect, was pushed aside by the new idea: Freddy was suffering because Laura had stolen her lover. "It was despicable in her!" Mrs. Payton said to herself--and the needle-point of anger came a little nearer to that sleeping nerve of maternity, which, when it was reached, would, in a pang of exquisite pain, make her love Fred as she had never loved anything in her life.