“Of course I don’t want to break our engagement,” the girl wrote.  “What makes you ask such a question?  I fully expect to marry you some day, of course, when I have had my little ‘fling,’ and I should just go crazy if I thought you didn’t love me as much as always.  You would if you saw me, for they all say I’m prettier than ever.  You don’t want to break the engagement, do you?  Please, please, don’t say so, for I couldn’t bear it.”

And in the next few lines she mentioned herself by name.  It was a well-known name to the boy’s mother, that of the daughter of a cousin with whom she had never been over-intimate.  She had had notes from the girl a few times, once or twice from abroad, which accounted for the familiarity of the writing.  So she gathered the letters together, the last one dated only a month before, and put them one side to send back.

“She will soon get over it,” she said, and sighed as she turned to the papers still left in the bottom of the box.  There were only a few, a thin packet of six or eight, and one lying separate.  She slipped the rubber band from the packet and looked hard at the irregular, strong writing, woman’s or man’s, it was hard to say which.  Then she spread out the envelopes and took them in order by the postmarks.  The first was a little note, thanking him for a book, a few lines of clever nothing signed by a woman’s name which she had never heard.

* * * * *

“My dear Mr. ——­,” it ran.  “Indeed you did get ahead of ‘all the others’ in sending me ‘The Gentleman from Indiana,’ So far ahead that the next man in the procession is not even in sight yet.  I hate to tell you that, but honesty demands it.  I have taken just one sidewise peep at ’The Gentleman’—­and like his looks immensely—­but to-morrow night I am going to pretend I have a headache and stay home from the concert where the family are going, and turn cannibal and devour him.  I hope nothing will interrupt me.  Unless—­I wonder if you are conceited enough to imagine what is one of the very few things I would like to have interrupt me?  After that bit of boldness I think I must stop writing to you.  I mean it just the same.  And thanking you a thousand times again, I am,

“Sincerely yours.”

There were four or five more of this sort, sometimes only a day or two, sometimes a month apart; always with some definite reason for the writing, flowers or books to thank him for, a walk to arrange, an invitation to dinner.  Charming, bright, friendly notes, with the happy atmosphere of a perfect understanding between them, of mutual interests and common enthusiasms.

“She was very different from the other,” the boy’s mother sighed, as she took up an unread letter—­there were but two more.  There was no harm in reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was two months later.