se
a train and an interview for me. Of course you will meet me at the
train and leave me at the interview. These are the fundamental
rules of my game. I know that you are clever and before we have
left the station you will know that I am. As arch-conspirators we
shall surely win out together, won't we?

Yours very truly,

Bertha Rosscott.

This missive posted, Jack's good angel made herself patient until the
afternoon of the next day when she might and did expect an answer.

She was not disappointed. The letter came and it was pleasantly bulky and
appeared ample enough to have contained an indexed gun powder plot. She
was so sure that Mitchell had been fully equal to the occasion that she
tore the envelope open with a smile--and read:

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:

To think of my having some of your handwriting for my own!--I was
nearly petrified with joy.

You see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those
"Burn this at once" epistles. And I know it still better from
having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how
impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must
digress backwards.)

I shall preserve your letter till I die. In war I shall wear it
carefully spread all over wherever I may be killed, and in peace I
intend to keep my place in my Bible with it. Could words say more!
(Being backed up again, I will now begin.)

I was not at all surprised at your writing me. If you had known me
it would have been different. But where ignorance is bliss any
woman but yourself is always liable to pitch in with a pen, and
you see you are not yourself but only "any woman" to me as yet.
Besides, women have written to me before you. My mother does so
regularly. She encloses a postal card and all I have to do is to
mail it and there she is answered. It's a great scheme which I
proudly invented when I first went away to school and I recommend
it to you if you--if you ever have a mother.

How my ink does run away with me! Let me refer to your esteemed
favor again! Ah! we have worked down to the bed-rock, or--in Hugh
Miller's colloquial phrasing--to the "old red sandstone," of the
fact that you want Jack. You state the fact with what you
designate as brutal cand