ent friendship," reminding Miss Winchelsea of a dozen foolish
things of those old schoolgirl days at the training college, and saying
not a word about Mr. Snooks!

For nearly a week Miss Winchelsea was so angry at the failure of Fanny
as a go-between that she could not write to her. And then she wrote less
effusively, and in her letter she asked point-blank, "Have you seen Mr.
Snooks?" Fanny's letter was unexpectedly satisfactory. "I HAVE seen Mr.
Snooks," she wrote, and having once named him she kept on about him;
it was all Snooks--Snooks this and Snooks that. He was to give a public
lecture, said Fanny, among other things. Yet Miss Winchelsea, after
the first glow of gratification, still found this letter a little
unsatisfactory. Fanny did not report Mr. Snooks as saying anything about
Miss Winchelsea, nor as looking a little white and worn, as he ought
to have been doing. And behold! before she had replied, came a second
letter from Fanny on the same theme, quite a gushing letter, and
covering six sheets with her loose feminine hand.

And about this second letter was a rather odd little thing that Miss
Winchelsea only noticed as she re-read it the third time. Fanny's
natural femininity had prevailed even against the round and clear
traditions of the training college; she was one of those she-creatures
born to make all her m's and n's and u's and r's and e's alike, and to
leave her o's and a's open and her i's undotted. So that it was only
after an elaborate comparison of word with word that Miss Winchelsea
felt assured Mr. Snooks was not really "Mr. Snooks" at all! In Fanny's
first letter of gush he was Mr. "Snooks," in her second the spelling was
changed to Mr. "Senoks." Miss Winchelsea's hand positively trembled as
she turned the sheet over--it meant so much to her. For it had already
begun to seem to her that even the name of Mrs. Snooks might be avoided
at too great a price, and suddenly--this possibility! She turned over
the six sheets, all dappled with that critical name, and everywhere the
first letter had the form of an E! For a time she walked the room with a
hand pressed upon her heart.

She spent a whole day pondering this change, weighing a letter of
inquiry that should be at once discreet and effectual, weighing too what
action she should take after the answer came. She was resolved that if
this altered spelling was anything more than a quaint fancy of Fanny's,
she would write forthwith to Mr. Snooks.