ten its cunning, the said dog will
find itself often outdistanced.

VI

THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON TO THE COUNTESS OF LANE

_Easthampton, Long Island._
_The loveliest moonlight April night._

DEAREST MERCEDES:

We're just beginning a short motor trip, pausing here all night because
it's beautiful, and because there's a dance which Pat and a large family
of girls, appropriately named Goodrich, wish to sample. To tell the
truth, I shouldn't mind dancing, myself! They're going to have a quaint
new thing dedicated by its inventor to Long Island. It's called the Gull
Glide. But Jack did too much last week, teaching Patsey to drive her
giant Grayles-Grice, and he says if he danced anything it would have to
be the Shamblers' Shake. I wouldn't put my nose inside the ballroom
without him; vowed I'd be bored stiff. The Goodrich girls' mother is
chaperoning her brood and Pat. I made Jack "seek his bed," as the French
say, but I'm on the balcony of our private sitting-room, in the
moonlight, writing by an electric lamp whose shade looks like an
illuminated red rose seen through silver mist. The music, which throbs
up to me like heart-beats, mingles with the undertone of the sea and
makes me thankful that Jack's so nice and loves me so much. Not to be
loved in such music and such moonlight would make one feel one wasn't a
woman!

The dance has just begun and will last hours. I've no intention of
trying to sleep till it's over, because I'm sure Pat will have things to
tell which really _can't_ wait till morning. Things like that never can!
Meanwhile I shall have time for a long letter to you--the kind you say
you like to get.

This is really for Monty also, since you are now with him, helping him
to get well, "Somewhere in France." Jack wanted to write a few lines
to-night, to put with mine, but his arm is very lame. He said, "Tell
Monty this is like old times, when he was recuperating in Davos, and I
was 'Lightning Conductor' for Molly Randolph."

Good gracious, what a lot of water has run past mills and under wheels
of motors since then! But luckily (since you ask us to chronicle our
adventures, as Jack did for Monty in those days) we can still mix the
honey of love with the lubricating oil of the machine. It will most
likely be Pat's and somebody else's love, not ours, although our stock
never runs dry. But you're interested in Pat's affairs, an