ost
dangerous. Your power of judgment, I pointed out, was temporarily
jarred and out of gear. You might marry anybody. The only safe, the
only humane way, was to give you time to recover yourself.

"Power of judgment!" said Aunt Caroline. "Do you mean to tell me that
my sister's son is in danger of becoming an idiot?"

I said not exactly an idiot. Yet your strong disinclination toward
marriage could certainly be traced to a shocked condition of the
nerves. Certain fixed ideas--

"Fixed ideas!" said your Aunt. She has a particularly annoying habit of
repeating one's words. "Benis has always had fixed ideas--though when
he was young," she added with satisfaction, "I knew how to unfix them.
If this absurd rest cure can do anything to cure chronic stubbornness,
I've nothing to say. Why, even his father was easier to manage."

"Benis," I said, "considers himself very like his father."

"Does he?" retorted your dear Aunt with withering scorn. "He is just as
much like his father as a lemon is like a lobster."

This ended our conversation. But the effect of it is still with me.
Last night I dreamed of lemons and today I prescribed lobster for a man
with acute dyspepsia. I tell you what, you old shirker, it's up to you
to come home and bear your own Aunt. I'm through. Bones.

P.S. The office nurse has been changed since you left. I have now Miss
Watkins, returned from overseas. I think you knew her--name of Mary?
Very good looking--almost her only fault.

P.P.S. What you say about your pleasant old gentle-man with the
umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under
treatment. I should say dangerous.

S.O.S. Aunt Caroline has just 'phoned to know whether all
letter-writing is barred or if not, wouldn't it be helpful if you were
to drop a line to a few of your young-friends? For herself she expects
nothing, but she does think, etc., etc., etc.!

Come back! B.

CHAPTER XII

Comprising a lengthy letter from, Benis Spence to John Rogers, M.D.

DEAR and Venerable Bones: Your fatherly letter came too late. What was
going to happen has happened. But I will be honest and admit that its
earlier arrival would have made no difference. Calm yourself with the
thought that our fates are written upon our foreheads. I have been able
to read mine for some little time now. For there are some things which
are impossible and leaving Desire here was one of them.

I call her "Desire" to you becau