ould have liked to have written and thanked you for them as soon as
I got them," said Ella, and Bertie's sky clouded at once.

"You know what mother is," he protested; "she opens all my letters, and
if she found I'd been giving presents to any one there'd have been
something to talk about for the next fortnight."

"Surely, at the age of twenty--" began Ella.

"I'm not twenty till September," interrupted Bertie.

"At the age of nineteen years and eight months," persisted Ella, "you
might be allowed to keep your correspondence private to yourself."

"I ought to be, but things aren't always what they ought to be. Mother
opens every letter that comes into the house, whoever it's for. My
sisters and I have made rows about it time and again, but she goes on
doing it."

"I'd find some way to stop her if I were in your place," said Ella
valiantly, and Bertie felt that the glamour of his anxiously deliberated
present had faded away in the disagreeable restriction that hedged round
its acknowledgment.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Bertie's friend Clovis when they met that
evening at the swimming-bath.

"Why do you ask?" said Bertie.

"When you wear a look of tragic gloom in a swimming-bath," said Clovis,
"it's especially noticeable from the fact that you're wearing very little
else. Didn't she like the handkerchiefs?"

Bertie explained the situation.

"It is rather galling, you know," he added, "when a girl has a lot of
things she wants to write to you and can't send a letter except by some
roundabout, underhand way."

"One never realises one's blessings while one enjoys them," said Clovis;
"now I have to spend a considerable amount of ingenuity inventing excuses
for not having written to people."

"It's not a joking matter," said Bertie resentfully: "you wouldn't find
it funny if your mother opened all your letters."

"The funny thing to me is that you should let her do it."

"I can't stop it. I've argued about it--"

"You haven't used the right kind of argument, I expect. Now, if every
time one of your letters was opened you lay on your back on the dining-
table during dinner and had a fit, or roused the entire family in the
middle of the night to hear you recite one of Blake's 'Poems of
Innocence,' you would get a far more respectful hearing for future
protests. People yield more consideration to a mutilated mealtime or a
broken night's rest, than ever they would to a broken heart."

"Oh, dry up,"