ed to, I resolved, I think I may say courageously, to discover
whether he still gave promise of fulfilling all the hopes I then
entertained for him.

"I wonder if some of our early experiences are still as fresh in
your mind as they are in mine! Do you remember that day you made me
stand guard while you 'blew' old Jones's eggs in retaliation for
his having turned informer against you? I think it was the time he
told about your having promoted a fight between two dogs. And do
you remember the day on the skating-pond when you broke through the
ice and frightened me into fits by disappearing three times below
the surface, while all the time you were standing, as you afterward
confessed, on solid bottom? I thought then I should never forgive
you for causing me in that unguarded moment to betray my feelings.
And then the telegraph scheme by which we communicated that time I
had the measles. It all seems to have occurred in some other world,
looking back at it now; and yet what happy times those were! I
believe I could go on forever with these reminiscences; but perhaps
they are not as sweet to you as they are to me; perhaps I am only
boring you with them. It would be a great disappointment to me,
though, to know that you never looked back with a sigh to those
days and never gave a thought to your once so devoted playmate.

"I am going to a place called Stillton this summer. I dare say you
never heard of it: it is in Maine; and I must confess I anticipate
a very stupid time there. Perhaps I shall have nothing else to do
but reflect upon the days of my early youth. Am I _quite_
forgotten?

"Your playmate of old,

"JANE JENNINGS.

"BOSTON, June 10, 188-."

The _nom de plume_ was borrowed from Mabel's faithful servant,--nurse in
earlier days, a description of maid now,--and was a safe one, as old
Jane proper was never known to receive letters, and, moreover, could not
have deciphered her own name on the envelope had one arrived for her.

The conflict on the following morning as to whether it should be sent or
destroyed, the tremble of the little hand that finally dropped it
irrevocably into the iron post-box, the vain reproaches and unanswered
longings for its return, the subsequent prayers that it might by some
providential interference be intercepted or miscarry, all followed in