the moonlight. It seemed that just before she went to sleep she'd
pinned her nightgown to his with a safety pin, which wasn't such a bad
idea for a simple, trusting, little village maiden.

"Was you wantin' anything, Duckie Doodums?" she asked in a voice like
the running of sap in maple-sugar time.

"N-n-nothin' but a drink of water, Honeybunch sweetness," he stammered
back.

[Illustration: "N-n-nothin' but a drink of water"]

"You're sure you ain't mistook in your thirst and that it ain't a
suddint cravin' for licker, and that you ain't sort of p'intin' down
the waterspout for the Dutchman's, Duckie Doodums?"

"Shorely not, Honeybunch darlin'," he finally fetched up, though he
was hardly breathing.

"Because your ma told me that you was given to somnambulasticatin' in
your sleep, and that I must keep you tied up nights or you'd wake up
some mornin' at the foot of a waterspout with your head bust open and
a lot of good licker spilt out on the grass."

"Don't you love your Doodums anymore?" was all Dickie could find to
say to this; but Honeybunch had too much on her mind to stop and swap
valentines just then.

"You wouldn't deceive your Honeybunch, would you, Duckie Doodums?"

"I shorely would not."

"Well, don't you do it, Duckie Doodums, because it would break my
heart; and if you should break my heart I'd just naturally bust your
head. Are you listenin', Doodums?"

Doodums was listening.

"Then you come back to bed and stay there."

Doodums never called his wife Honeybunch after that. Generally it was
Kate, and sometimes it was Kitty, and when she wasn't around it was
usually Kitty-cat. But he minded better than anything I ever met on
less than four legs.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.--You might tear up this letter.

No. 8

From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee. In replying to his
father's hint that it is time to turn his thoughts from love to lard,
the young man has quoted a French sentence, and the old man has been
both pained and puzzled by it.

VIII

CHICAGO, January 24, 189-.

_Dear Pierrepont_: I had to send your last letter to the fertilizer
department to find out what it was all about. We've got a clerk there
who's an Oxford graduate, and who speaks seven languages for fifteen
dollars a week, or at the rate of something more than two dollars a
language. Of course, if you're such a big