eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured,
"Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated
gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's
sensitiveness.

"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's
sensitiveness.

"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!"

Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light
dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your
Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie."

Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to
light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant Dickie," she said.
"Nobody in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a
worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird
to peck him. I know that."

"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary
tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a
relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't
you goin' to read your note?"

Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite
beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both
wisely and too well.

"My darling--Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and
sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed
to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"--"I cannot think of
anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to
keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a
more tremendous lover than me.... Be _my_ Queen," Jim had written with a
great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James."

Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight
in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose
of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into
her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught
her about the ribs.

Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment
as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature
preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which
Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy
glow. The favorite of Kings, the _amorita_ of Dukes, does not rock with
laughter