the cavernous
room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water,
and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit.

Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of
a human being Carl Stanton lay and cursed the brutal Northern winter.

Between his sturdy, restive shoulders the rheumatism snarled and
clawed like some utterly frenzied animal trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its
way out. Along the tortured hollow of his back a red-hot plaster fumed
and mulled and sucked at the pain like a hideously poisoned fang
trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its way in. Worse than this; every four or
five minutes an agony as miserably comic as a crashing blow on one's
crazy bone went jarring and shuddering through his whole abnormally
vibrant system.

In Stanton's swollen fingers Cornelia's large, crisp letter rustled
not softly like a lady's skirts but bleakly as an ice-storm in
December woods.

Cornelia's whole angular handwriting, in fact, was not at all unlike a
thicket of twigs stripped from root to branch of every possible
softening leaf.

"DEAR CARL" crackled the letter, "In spite of your
unpleasant tantrum yesterday, because I would not kiss you
good-by in the presence of my mother, I am good-natured
enough you see to write you a good-by letter after all. But
I certainly will not promise to write you daily, so kindly
do not tease me any more about it. In the first place, you
understand that I greatly dislike letter-writing. In the
second place you know Jacksonville quite as well as I do, so
there is no use whatsoever in wasting either my time or
yours in purely geographical descriptions. And in the third
place, you ought to be bright enough to comprehend by this
time just what I think about 'love-letters' anyway. I have
told you once that I love you, and that ought to be enough.
People like myself do not change. I may not talk quite as
much as other people, but when I once say a thing I mean it!
You will never have cause, I assure you, to worry about my
fidelity.

"I will honestly try to write you every Sunday these next
six weeks, but I am not willing to literally promise even
that. Mother indeed thinks that we ought not to write very
much at all until our engagement is formally announced.

"Trusting that your rheumatism is very much better this
morning, I am

"Hastily yours,

"CO