When the White Linen Nurse wasn’t busy renovating the big house—­or the little step-daughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon.  She wrote twice.

“Dear Dr. Faber,” the first letter said.

* * * * *

DEAR DR. FABER,

How do you do?  Thank you very much, for saying you didn’t care what in thunder I did to the house.  It looks sweet.  I’ve put white fluttery muslin curtains most everywhere.  And you’ve got a new solid-gold-looking bed in your room.  And the Kiddie and I have fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in the ell.  Pink was wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only $29.00 to find out.  And now that’s settled for all time.

I am very, very, very, very busy.  Something strange and new happens every day.  Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber.  One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn’t buy any.  It was horrid soap.  The other two were calling ladies,—­a silk one and a velvet one.  The silk one tried to be nasty to me.  Right to my face she told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope.  And I told her I was sorry for that as you’d had one “lady” and it didn’t work.  Was that all right?  But the other lady was nice.  And I took her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork, and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed me how to mix the paint pearl gray. She was nice.  It was your sister-in-law.

I like being married, Dr. Faber.  I like it lots better than I thought I would.  It’s fun being the biggest person in the house.  Respectfully yours, RAE MALGREGOR,—­AS WAS.

P.S.  Oh, I hope it wasn’t wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I went to put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelt as though it had been forgotten.—­I threw it out.

* * * * *

It was this letter that drew the only definite message from the itinerant bridegroom.

“Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets,” wrote the Senior Surgeon quite briefly.  “The ‘thing’ you threw out happened to be the cerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English Theologian!”

“Even so,—­it was sour,” telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfect agony of remorse and humiliation.

The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, and cost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars.  Just impulsively the Senior Surgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs,—­at that particular range.

Very fortunately for this impulse the White Linen Nurse’s second letter concerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous to the home.

“Dear Dr. Faber,” the second letter ran.

* * * * *

DEAR DR. FABER,