man was carried at high speed in an automobile to the
nearest station to the camp, and arrived in time to catch the Baltimore
train just stopping. In the Baltimore station he went to mail the letter
just as the letter gatherer arrived with his keys to open the box. So the
letter lost no time but was sorted and started northward before midnight,
and by some happy chance arrived at its destination in time to be laid by
Ruth Macdonald's plate at lunch time the next day.

Some quick sense must have warned Ruth, for she gathered her mail up and
slipped it unobtrusively into the pocket of her skirt before it could be
noticed. Dottie Wetherill had come home with her for lunch and the bright
red Y.M.C.A. triangle on the envelope was so conspicuous. Dottie was
crazy over soldiers and all things military. She would be sure to exclaim
and ask questions. She was one of those people who always found out
everything about you that you did not keep under absolute lock and key.

Every day since she had written her letter to Cameron Ruth had watched
for an answer, her cheeks glowing sometimes with the least bit of
mortification that she should have written at all to have received this
rebuff. Had he, after all, misunderstood her? Or had the letter gone
astray, or the man gone to the front? She had almost given up expecting
an answer now after so many weeks, and the nice warm olive-drab sweater
and neatly knitted socks with extra long legs and bright lines of color
at the top, with the wristlets and muffler lay wrapped in tissue paper at
the very bottom of a drawer in the chiffonier where she would seldom see
it and where no one else would ever find it and question her. Probably by
and by when the colored draftees were sent away she would get them out
and carry them down to the headquarters to be given to some needy man.
She felt humiliated and was beginning to tell herself that it was all her
own fault and a good lesson for her. She had even decided not to go and
see John Cameron's mother again lest that, too, might be misunderstood.
It seemed that the frank true instincts of her own heart had been wrong,
and she was getting what she justly deserved for departing from Aunt
Rhoda's strictly conventional code.

Nevertheless, the letter in her pocket which she had not been able to
look at carefully enough to be sure if she knew the writing, crackled and
rustled and set her heart beating excitedly, and her mind to wondering
what it might b