ls to dancing.

"All right, Miss Peace. I'll see that you aren't bothered with any more
packages."

Peace heaved a great sigh of relief, and turned energetically back to
her basket weaving, which had been sadly neglected of late. The parcels
actually did cease coming, and the two conspirators hugged themselves
with delight that it had not been necessary to tell their secret so no
one knew what sillies they were. By common consent they barred chain
letters as a topic of conversation, and had almost forgotten the hateful
packages when one morning Peace received a letter from Miss Truman,
still a teacher in the Parker School, saying that she had just mailed a
large box addressed to the little invalid, and hoped that Peace would
enjoy its contents. The girl was wild with anticipation, but the parcel
did not put in appearance that afternoon, nor the next day, nor the
next.

"I am afraid it has gone astray," said Grandpa Campbell when the third
morning passed without it coming.

"And won't I ever get it?" asked Peace disconsolately.

"Such things sometimes happen, though Parker is such a short distance
from here that it seems almost impossible for it to have been lost. I
will call at the Post Office and inquire. Perhaps for some reason it is
stalled there."

That afternoon he appeared with the coveted parcel in his hand and a
mystified look in his eyes.

"You got it?" shrieked Peace in ecstasy.

"Yes, I got it, but if the Postmaster had not been a very good friend of
mine, you would never have seen it."

"Why not?" Peace was genuinely amazed. "What right had the Postmaster
to my package? Did he want to keep it?"

"He tells me that you issued orders two weeks or more ago not to deliver
any more packages to your address."

"He--oh, that was buttons! I didn't mean this kind of packages."

"Buttons!" the President looked even more puzzled.

"O, dear," sighed Peace unhappily. "Now I've got to tell what a
silly-pate I've been." So she poured out the tale of the endless chain
to the astonished man, ending with the characteristic remark, "And I
told the letter-carrier to send all the rest of the button packages to
the letter graveyard at Washington, but I s'posed of course he'd bring
me packages like this."

"He has no way of distinguishing between them, my dear," the President
gravely informed her, trying hard to keep his face straight. "You
ordered _all_ parcels addressed to you stopped. You refused to accept
the