ates by the pound. This made Miss Bolton droop, with another
disappointed "Oh." The grain of the world seems so coarse when one looks
at it closely.

We did not see Miss Bolton at the office for a long time after the duke
abducted the lady in the moated grange, but we received a poem signed M.
B. "To Dan Cupid," and another on "My Heart of Fire." Also there came an
anonymous communication in strangely familiar fat vertical handwriting
to the effect that "some people in this town think that if a young lady
has a gentleman friend call on her more than twice a week it is their
business to assume a courtship. They should know that there are souls
on this earth whose tendrils reach into the infinite beyond the gross
materiality of this mundane sphere to a destiny beyond the stars." At
the bottom of the page were the words: "Please publish and oblige a
subscriber."

The next that we heard of Miss Bolton was that she was running pink and
blue baby-ribbon through her white things, and was expecting a linen
shower from the T. T. T. girls, a silver shower from the "Giddy Young
Things," a handkerchief shower from the Entre Nous girls, and a kitchen
shower from the Imperial Club. Miss Larrabee, the society editor, began
to hate Miss Bolton with the white-hot hate which all society editors
turn on all brides. Miss Larrabee was authority for the statement that
Maybelle had used five hundred yards of baby-ribbon--pink and blue and
white and yellow--in her trousseau, and that she was bestowing the same
passionate fervour on her hemstitching and tucking that she had wasted
on literature; that she was helping papa and mamma by shouldering the
biggest wedding on them since the Tomlinsons went into bankruptcy after
their firework ceremonial. Miss Larrabee said that Papa Bolton's
livery-stable was burning up so fast that she wanted to call out the
fire department, and that Mamma Bolton made her think of the
patent-medicine testimonials we printed from "poor tired women."

The day of the wedding the blow came. A very starched-up little boy with
strawberry juice frescoed around his mouth brought in a note from
Maybelle and a tightly-rolled manuscript tied with blue baby-ribbon. In
the note she said that she thought it would be so romantic to "write up
her own wedding--recalling the dear, dead days when she was a neophyte
in letters." We handed the manuscript to Miss Larrabee, from whom, as
she read, came snorts: "'Drawing-room!' Huh! 'Music