Well, old doc said it was cellulitis, which didn’t sound very reassuring. It comes from having the cellular tissues hurt. And every day he done that arm up in plaster and eight miles of bandages. And three or four times he brung along his knives and lancets and was going to carving at it, but I wouldn’t let him. I haven’t been able to write any more than a rabbit. I’m getting so I can use a small quantity of my fingers now, and this is the first answer to any letter in the basket. And that is why I haven’t written to thank you for the photo, which I appreciate highly, and shall not return as you suggest in your P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter. What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me. I can’t suggest any improvement in it. It has lots of your old expression in it, and although the fool photographer did all he could to spoil it by making you turn your head as if you were looking to see if your dress was buttoned all down the back, it’s a ripping nice picture, and you needn’t want to be “any better to look at than the picture.” (Can’t you say the mean things when you want to!) Now, I wish you’d behave, and take your finger out of your mouth and stand right there—turn your toes out—and say you are sorry. Lemme see!—there was another dig—oh, yes—if I “had been a pauper or a millionaire.” You bet I’m a pauper now, Miss Carrie. Blowed all my money in on my trip, and ain’t made any to speak of since except what doc would carry away with him every day. Getting along all right again, though, now. How’s your writing coming on? Now will you shake hands again, although it’s my left one this time? Yours as ever, R. H. _December 20th._ I have another letter from Bobby. And I didn’t answer his last letter. As I read it a wicked little joy steals in on me and grows and _grows_. _New York, December 18th._ MY DEAR MISS CARRIE: Now get mad if you want to, but couldn’t you agree to let somebody call you that? (Bobby has scratched out the “Miss.”) That’s the way I think of you, and if you insist on being called by your golf and automobile name of Carrie, why, tear up this letter and throw it out the kitchen window over the cliff. Why didn’t you answer my last letter? Rowing on the lake, I suppose, with the gent that comes to see you. I hope the lake will freeze. And I hope the gent—won’t freeze. So, there! I am looking over your last letter to-night, and it’s like the breath of a spring wind through a laurel thicket. I’m going to take it page by page and answer it.