“Where is Miss Pettengill?” Quincy inquired.

“She’s in the parlor,” said Mandy.  “She has been playing the piano and singing beautifully, but I guess she has got tired.”

Quincy went directly to the parlor and found Alice seated before the open fire, her right hand covering her eyes.

She, looked up as Quincy entered the room and said, “I am so glad you’ve got back, Mr. Sawyer.  I have been very lonesome since you have been away.”

Alice did not see the happy smile that spread over Quincy’s face, and he covered up his pleasure by saying, “How did you know it was I?”

“Oh,” said Alice, “my hearing is very acute.  I know the step of every person in the house.  Swiss has been with me all the morning, but he asked a few minutes ago to be excused, so he could get his dinner.”

Quincy laughed, and then, said, “Miss Pettengill, we forgot a very important matter in connection with your stories; we omitted to put on the name of the author.”  He told her of his meeting with Ernst, and what had taken place, and Alice was delighted.  Quincy did not refer to the coming visit of Dr. Tillotson, for he did not mean to speak of it until the day appointed arrived.  “Now, Miss Pettengill, I have some letters to write to send back by the hotel carriage, so that they can be mailed this afternoon.  While I am doing this you can decide upon your pseudonym, and I will put it in the letter that I am going to write to Ernst.”

Quincy went up to his room and sat down at his writing table.  The first letter was to his bankers, and enclosed a check for five hundred dollars, with a request to send the amount in bills by Adams Express to Eastborough Centre, to reach there not later than noon of the next Tuesday, and to be held until called for.  The second letter was to a prominent confectioner and caterer in Boston, ordering enough ice cream, sherbet, frozen pudding, and assorted cake for a party of fifty persons, and fifty grab-bag presents; all to reach Eastborough Centre in good order on Monday night on the five minutes past six express from Boston.  The third letter was to Ernst.  It was short and to the point.  “The pseudonym is—.”  And he left a blank space for the name.  Then he signed his own.  He glanced over his writing table and saw the three poems that Alice had given him to read.  He added a postscript to his letter to Ernst.  It read as follows: 

“I enclose three poems written by the same person who wrote the stories.  Tell me what you think of them, and if you can place them anywhere do so, and this shall be your warrant therefor.  Q.A.S.”

When his mail was in readiness he went downstairs to the parlor, taking a pen and bottle of ink with him, and saying to himself, “That pseudonym shall not be written in pencil.”

“I am in a state of hopeless indecision,” remarked Alice.  “I can think of Christian names that please me, and surnames that please me, but when I put them together they don’t please me at all.”