Sid didn’t like Harry Goward any more than I did, because he’d borrowed Sid’s best racket and left it out in the rain, and then just laughed.  So he said:  “Not sad enough.  Give it to me.  I’ll fix it.”

He had some molasses candy that he’d bit, and he rubbed that over it a little, and then suddenly we heard Alice calling, and he crammed the letter in his pocket, candy and all, and there were some other things in there that stuck to it.  We were so rattled when Alice appeared and demanded that very letter in her lordly way that I forgot if I had it or Sid, and I went all through my clothes looking for it, and then Sid found it in his, and, oh, my!  Miss Alice turned up her nose when she saw it.  It did look smudgy.

Sid hurriedly scrubbed it with his handkerchief, but even that didn’t really make it clean, and by that time you couldn’t read the address.  Alice didn’t ask me if I’d read it, or I’d have told her.

There was a fuss afterward in the family, but I kept clear of it.  I wouldn’t have time to get through what I have to do if I attended to their fusses, so all I knew was that it had something to do with that letter.  All the family were taking trains, like a procession, for two or three days.  I don’t know why, so Lorraine can’t expect me to write that down.

There’s only one other event of great signification that I know about, and nobody knows that except me and Dr. Denbigh and Peggy.  It was this way.  The doctor saw me on the street one afternoon—­I can’t remember what day it was—­and stopped his machine and motioned to me to get in.  You bet I got.  He shook hands with me just the way he would with father, and not as if I were a contemptible puppy.

“Billy, my son, I want you to do something for me,” he said.

“All right,” said I.

“I’ve got to see Peggy,” he went on.  “I’ve got to!” And he looked as fierce as a circus tiger.  “I can’t sit still and not lift a finger and let this wretched business go on.  I won’t lose her for any silly scruples.”

I didn’t know what he was driving at, but I said, “I wouldn’t, either,” in a sympathetic manner.

“I’ve got to see her!” he fired at me again.

“Yep,” I said.  “She’s up at the house now.  Come on.”  But that didn’t suit him.  He explained that she wouldn’t look at him when the others were around, and that she slid off and wormed out of his way, so he couldn’t get at her, anyhow.  Just like a girl, wasn’t it—­not to face the music?  Well, anyway, he’d cooked up a plan that he wanted me to do, and I promised I would.  He wanted me to get Peggy to go up the river to their former spooning-resort (only he put it differently), and he would be there waiting and make Peggy talk to him, which he seemed to desire more than honey in the honeycomb.