pressed laughter. Even Mrs.
Shuster hadn't the "cheek" to try and attract the man's attention, and
we returned to our own class thanking our conductor for "all the
interesting things he had shown us." I wondered if he knew that while we
spoke in plural we thought in singular!

"The _dreadful_ old lady will never let go of that poor fellow till
she's ruined all the romance, and made him a respectable paid propaganda
or something!" sighed Patsey Moore when we were tucked into our deck
chairs once more.

I laughed, but saw that she was quite serious, almost tragic. One of her
charms is her funny English. She's lived in France and talked French so
long that she has to translate herself into English, so to speak; and
sometimes she has the quaintest conception of how to do it. Also she
rolls her "rs"; and if the Mystery had heard himself alluded to by her
as a "pr-r-opoganda" he would never have forgotten it. As for Mrs.
Shuster--she mightn't have minded the Maxim gun of that long-drawn
"d-r-r-_read_ful!" but her very vitals would have melted over the "old
lady." Despite her largeness and oddness of appearance generally, she
considers herself a _young_ widow, with a personal fascination beyond
that of her banking account. I, with the mellow leniency of--let me
see?--twenty-six, find this pathetic. But Patsey on the sunny slope of
nineteen can't even envisage my viewpoint. For her, a woman over thirty
is middle-aged. When she's forty she is old, and there's an end of it.
How much the poor baby has to learn! I hope she won't do it in being
outrivalled with her best young man some day, by a dazzling siren of
forty-five who knows all the tricks of the trade and looks younger than
any respectable woman ought to look at half that age!

_March 19th_.

I was interrupted there, and I seem to have done nothing else but be
interrupted ever since, either by big bumpy Mrs. Shuster, or some one,
or else by big bumpy waves which make me want not to write letters. At
this moment Patsey is calling "Oh, _do_ come and look at the Statue of
Liberty! I thought I remembered her twice that size and twice as
handsome!"

Dearest Mercedes, I must go at once and browbeat Jack (who's never seen
the lady you know) into admiring her at pain of losing my love.

Ever your affectionate

MOLLY.

II

THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON TO HER FRIEND THE COUNTESS OF LANE