nd--oh, well, I'll open
it later on," and she tucked it among the others, just to gain time, as
she explained it to herself.

"No, you don't! No, you don't!" cried Evelyn. "We have stumbled upon a
deep, dark mystery and it must be cleared up at once, at once. Come on,
Lucy; who wrote that letter?"

"I tell you I don't know myself, so how can I tell you?" cried Lucile,
angry at herself for being so confused.

"If you don't know whom it's from, why do you get all red and snappy and
try to hide it?" asked Evelyn, triumphantly. "'Fess up, Lucy. You might
as well, first as last, for you can't fool us."

"Methinks," began Jessie, in deep, stentorian tones, "that this writing
seems strangely familiar. Where can I have seen it before? Ah, I have
it!" Then, suddenly throwing her arms about Lucile in a strangling hug,
she cried, "Oh, I knew it, I knew it! I knew he would just go crazy about
you, like all the rest of us. He couldn't help himself! And you never,
never would believe anything could happen the way it does in
novels--oh--oh----"

"Oh, I see it all! I see it all!" shouted Evelyn, suddenly springing up
and whirling about the room, using her letters as a tambourine. "It's
Jessie's cousin! He's gone--he's gone----"

"Girls, you are crazy, both of you!" cried Lucile, extricating herself
with difficulty from Jessie's strangle hold and smoothing back the hair
that was tumbling down in the most becoming disorder--or so her two
friends would have told you--while her laughing eyes tried hard to look
severe. "Probably it isn't from him at all, and if it is, why--why--well,
it is," she ended, desperately.

"Why, of course it is," soothed Jessie; "but I don't think you need worry
about it not being from him----"

"Aren't you going to read it over now?" broke in Evelyn. "Then you can
tell us----"

"I wouldn't tell you a thing," said Lucile, driven to her last
entrenchment; "and what's more, I'm not going to read it till I get good
and ready, and not then if I don't want to," and she slipped her letter
into her pocketbook, which she closed with a defiant little snap. "Now,
what are you going to do about it?" she challenged, gaily.

"We might use force," mused Jessie, meditatively.

"But you're not going to, because you can't," Lucile declared, raising a
round little arm not yet wholly free from last summer's tan, for
inspection. "Just look at that muscle," she invited.

"Terrific!" cried Evelyn, in mock terror. "Guess