he reason--at least one of the reasons--I've grown to love
you. You're a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you won't
make yourself comfortable, you must be MADE comfortable.

We'll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum--how does a
yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it
won't be green. And it won't have a mansard roof. And we'll have a big
cheerful living room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK.
Poor old thing! won't she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner
when she hears the news! But we won't tell her for a long, long time--or
anybody else. It's too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own
broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented
self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I'm growing Scotch
mysel'!

Perhaps I didn't tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn't
known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier
burned. When you were up under that blazing roof, and for the half hour
that followed, when we didn't know whether or not you would live, I
can't tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did
go, that I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have
let the best friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of
misunderstanding between us--well--I couldn't wait for the moment when I
should be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting
inside me for five months. And then--you know that you gave strict
orders to keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect
that you really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that
it was just that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back?
You are a very good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives
again we have the tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let's
promise not to shut it up inside ourselves, but to TALK.

Last night, after they all got off,--early, I am pleased to say, since
the chicks no longer live at home,--I came upstairs and finished my
letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and struggled with
temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to you. But I
didn't dare. I'm still quite respectably bashful! So, as the next best
thing to talking with you, I got out Burns and read him for an hour. I
dropped asleep with all those Scotch love songs running in my head, and
here I am at daybreak writ