"Exactly! And I knew he was serious about it, too, though, like a foolish old woman, I must needs go on to tell him that a boy of his age ought to have a real sweetheart. Well, presently he became very quiet, his mouth set firmly, as it does when he is thinking hard, and he looked straight at me. 'Miss Whimple, you know what real love is,' he said. 'I hope when it comes to me I'll be as worthy of it and as true as you have been,' and then--why, he was the real William again in a flash. 'Say,' he said, 'why don't you go out to a ball game once in a while? Lots of ladies go, and the way the Torontos are playing this season it looks like they'd be champions again for the second time in four years. Honest, they've got me wild, and Tommy Watson's crazier than I am. He can't go to the games as often as he used to, because he's looney about his wife and little Tommy too. So, when I go and he doesn't I have to tell the whole story of the game to him, and--say, excuse me, I'll just have time to get to the grounds to see the last four innings,' and away he went. "Once I asked Whimple if William had a girl, and he told me the boy was too busy. That's the kind of a fool answer a man makes when he either doesn't know, or does know and won't tell. Then he told me about a trick that Tommy Watson and himself played on William, only it didn't work out in the way they expected. It puzzles me to know how men find time to go into such silliness. Between them they wrote a letter, in a disguised hand, of course, and supposedly from a girl to William. He had been taking part in one of the amateur performances that Epstein arranged for the Children's Hospital, and the letter declared that the writer had been so touched by the wonderful ability displayed by William that she felt she might be forgiven if she did so unmaidenly a thing as to ask for a personal interview. William got the letter--the over-grown boys saw to that--read it through carefully, stowed it away in one of his pockets, and--well, as Tommy Watson says, he just sat tight. "A few days afterwards they wrote another, to which William was to send a reply to a certain post-office box. But there was no sign of an answer. A third letter was written, imploring the recipient to have mercy, or words to that effect, and two days afterwards a detective called on Whimple and Tommy Watson. He found them together in Tommy's store and opened the conversation with the hope that they were not writing any more love letters. They were dumbfounded. Before they could even think of an explanation the detective warned them in his most official manner that the gentleman whom they were annoying by their devotion to the art of letter-writing had decided that on receipt of further epistles he would institute proceedings, and start with a full statement to the press on the matter, including the names of the letter writers.