It was a month before I had a reply to my answer to his note, and the reply was as short as the note, and quite as constrained. He told me that he was well enough himself, but that his mother's health worried him, since Denver did not agree with her, and she was pining to be back in New York. He added a postscript, in which he told me that he had dined a few nights before with the local manager of the insurance company, and that he had met the manager's sister, a wealthy widow from California, a most attractive woman, indeed. With needless emphasis he declared that he liked a woman of the world old enough to talk sensibly. Another month passed before I heard from him again, and Christmas had gone and the new year had almost come. The contents of this letter, written on Christmas eve, when the frog that played the trombone had been sitting on the corner of my desk for just a year, was as startling as its manner was strange. He told me that his engagement was broken off irrevocably. If my own affairs had permitted it, I should have taken the first train to Denver to discover what had happened. As it was I went again to call on the landlady's daughter. But she refused to see me again. Word was brought me that she was engaged, and begged to be excused. About a fortnight later I chanced to meet on a street corner the classmate who had got my friend the Denver appointment. I asked if there was any news. "Isn't there!" was the response. "I should think there was, and lots of it! You know our friend in Denver? Well, we have a telegram this morning: his health is shaky, and so he has resigned his position." "Resigned his position!" I echoed. "What does that mean?" "That's what we wanted to know," replied my classmate, "so we telegraphed to our local manager, and he gave us an explanation right off the reel. The manager has a sister who is the widow of a California millionaire, and she has been in Denver for the winter, and she has met our friend; and for all she is a good ten years older than he is, she has been fascinated by him--you know what a handsome fellow he is--and she's going to marry him next week, and take him to Egypt for his health." "He's going to marry the California widow?" I asked, in astonishment. "Why, he's enga--" Then I suddenly held my peace. "He's going to marry the California widow," was the answer,--"or she's going to marry him; it's all the same, I suppose."