The result of her weariness and exposure was a sharp attack of tonsilitis that kept her in bed several weeks.  The first time she was able to be up, she began to count the hours until the next visiting day at the Camp.  Her basket was packed the evening before, and placed beside the box of carnations in which she had extravagantly indulged.  It is doubtful whether Miss Mink was ever so happy in her life as during that hour of pleased expectancy.

As she moved feebly about putting the house in order, so that she could make an early start in the morning, she discovered a letter that the Postman had thrust under the side door earlier in the day.  Across the left hand corner was pictured an American flag, and across the right was a red triangle in a circle.  She hastily tore off the envelop and read: 

    Dear Miss Mink: 

I am out the Hospital, getting along fine.  Hope you are in the same circumstances.  I am sending you a book which I got from a Dear Young Lady, in the Hospital.  I really do not know what to call her because I do not know her name, but I know she deserve a nice, nice name for all good She dose to all soldiers.  I think she deserve more especially from me than to call her a Sweet Dear Lady, because that I have the discouragement, and she make me to laugh and take heart.  I would ask your kind favor to please pass the book back to the Young Lady, and pleas pass my thankful word to her, and if you might be able to send me her name before that I go to France, which I learn is very soon.  Excuse all errors if you pleas will.  This is goodby from

  Your soldier friend,
  A. Bowinski.

Miss Mink read the letter through, then she sat down limply in a kitchen chair and stared at the stove.  Twice she half rose to get the pen and ink on the shelf above the coal box, but each time she changed her mind, folded her arms indignantly, and went back to her stern contemplation of the stove.  Presently a tear rolled down her cheek, then another, and another until she dropped her tired old face in her tired old hands, and gave a long silent sob that shook her slight body from head to foot.  Then she rose resolutely and sweeping the back of her hand across her eyes, took down her writing materials.  On one side of a post card she wrote the address of Alexis Bowinski, and on the other she penned in her cramped neat writing, one line: 

“Her name is Lois Chalmers.  Hotel LeRoy.”

This done she unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went back to her buttonholes.

A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE

A shabby but joyous citizen of the world at large was Mr. Phelan Harrihan, as, with a soul wholly in tune with the finite, he half sat and half reclined on a baggage-truck at Lebanon Junction.  He wag relieving the tedium of his waiting moments by entertaining a critical if not fastidious audience of three.