ps and paper cost too much such times as these to waste 'em
on women."

"I'm curious to know what sort o' chap you've decided on," said Henley.
"What does he look like?"

"He's a pig in a poke." She had finished writing and was drawing the
gummed flap of the envelope across her smiling lips. "I never laid eyes
on 'im in my life. What do you think of that? But that part must never
get out. I want Carrie and all the rest to--to think, you see, that I
got acquainted with him in--in the regular way. She never would get
through talking if she knew the full truth, and that is nobody's
business but his and mine. You may think I am a born fool, Alfred, but
for the past six months I've been corresponding with a fellow in
Florida. But he's all right. Don't you worry; he's _safe_, and that is a
lot to say in this day of trickery and strife. It all come about by
accident. I've got a cousin--Tobe Chasteen--working down there in an
orange-grove, and now and then he writes me a letter. Well, in one he
wrote that a nice fellow down there wanted to write to some girl up in
Georgia, and asked me if I'd answer. So, just for fun, and to kill time,
I agreed, and so it started. He writes a good, flowing hand, and has
plenty to say, and I got interested in the whole thing. He sent his
picture, and wanted one of me. So I put on my best outfit and had a
tintype struck off under that tent on the square and sent it to him. It
was a frightful daub, I tell you; but he liked it, or said he did; he
said it was fine, and if the goods come up to the sample that was all he
could ask. I've got his in my pocket. I don't tote it about all the
time, but it happened to be in the pocket of this dress. My two women
want it to stay in the clock, so they can get it out and peep at it when
I'm in the field. They are more crazy about him than I am. They sneak
and read my letters, and ask ten thousand questions about him. There are
some of his long epistles that I wouldn't show 'em for money--they are
so silly. At first we just wrote about what was going on, but he kept
edging closer and closer, and I never, in so many words, told him to let
up. Once he drew a round ring in the middle of a blank page and asked
under it if I couldn't guess what was in the middle of it. I looked
close and could see a greasy splotch when it was held sidewise in the
light. That kinder disgusted me, and I drew a ring in my answer, and
told him there wasn't anything in mine, and never w