upkin and Zena Pepperleigh
first came to know one another. Like everything else about them, it was
a sheer matter of coincidence, quite inexplicable unless you understand
that these things are fore-ordained.

That, of course, is the way with fore-ordained affairs and that's where
they differ from ordinary love.

I won't even try to describe how Mr. Pupkin felt when he first spoke
with Zena and sat beside her as they copied out the "endless chain"
letter asking for ten cents. They wrote out, as I said, no less than
eight of the letters between them, and they found out that their
handwritings were so alike that you could hardly tell them apart, except
that Pupkin's letters were round and Zena's letters were pointed and
Pupkin wrote straight up and down and Zena wrote on a slant. Beyond that
the writing was so alike that it was the strangest coincidence in the
world. Of course when they made figures it was different and Pupkin
explained to Zena that in the bank you have to be able to make a seven
so that it doesn't look like a nine.

So, as I say, they wrote the letters all afternoon and when it was over
they walked up Oneida Street together, ever so slowly. When they got
near the house, Zena asked Pupkin to come in to tea, with such an easy
off-hand way that you couldn't have told that she was half an hour late
and was taking awful chances on the judge. Pupkin hadn't had time to say
yes before the judge appeared at the door, just as they were stepping up
on to the piazza, and he had a table napkin in his hand and the dynamite
sparks were flying from his spectacles as he called out:

"Great heaven! Zena, why in everlasting blazes can't you get in to tea
at a Christian hour?"

Zena gave one look of appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance of
comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the scene
wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the Troubadour,
it at least had something of the same elements in it.

Pupkin walked home to his supper at the Mariposa House on air, and that
evening there was a gentle distance in his manner towards Sadie, the
dining-room girl, that I suppose no bank clerk in Mariposa ever showed
before. It was like Sir Galahad talking with the tire-women of Queen
Guinevere and receiving huckleberry pie at their hands.

After that Mr. Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh constantly met together.
They played tennis as partners on the grass court behind Dr. Gallagher's
h