The Argosy, Vol. 61, No. 4 — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHUTE THAT had he quite done that? What was she saying ? ‘Her letter will certainly keep till morning. Jennie Chalmers’s letters al- ways bore me.” Jennie Chalmers! What had a letter from her to do with this? ‘You see,” Miss Carrol explained, “that letter in the chute was from Jen- nie—I recognized her handwriting.” Was he mad? Tom wondered dazedly. She must be mistaken. Not knowing his handwriting—which might resemble that of her friend’s, for all he knew— she had naturally fallen into this error. He would make sure of it—going carefully, though, for he was on danger- ous ground where a stumble in his words meant exposing everything to- her. ‘You are sure the letter was from— from Miss Chalmers?” he asked. ‘“T know it was,” she replied. “ For, besides recognizing her writing, the letter was addressed to me at Spraycliff, where mother and I expect to go to-morrow morning. I told Jennie the last time I saw her, in the hotel this morning, that we were leaving to-day, as we intended doing. So she addressed me _ there, thinking her letter would arrive after we did. No one else knew we were going.” She said the letter in the chute was addressed to Spraycliff— and she had looked closely at the envelope, as he had not. His letter was addressed to her at the hotel—he had sent it through the mail, not wishing the note delivered from him by any one in the house who would gos- sip, perhaps, over the fact of their corre- spondence. Could it possibly be that his letter had not stuck, but gone straight down the slide? He had turned his back on the chute after mailing his envelope—when he looked again a letter was there. But hadn’t he jumped too quickly at conclusions in thinking it his? Just as the letter in question had been sent down the chute by one posted from the floors above, perhaps this might have come from the same direction and lodged by chance before him. “Vou said that Miss Chalmers was stopping on what floor of the hotel?” he asked cautiously. ‘The one above us,” was the answer. BALKED. 653 “I suppose, too, that her letter stuck in the slide because it was a little too thick to go down smoothly. Jennie always writes such perfect volumes when she corresponds with me.” _ He was right, then. He had mistaken another letter stuck in the chute for his, because he saw it where he expected his would be, if by any chance it had been caught. His letter—his love-letter—had lain down-stairs in the mail-box all the time his nerves had been undergoing the tre- mendous strain of fearing that she would read it before him. And he had not lied to her when he said the letter in the chute was not from him. It wasn’t. _ She would get his letter the next morn- ing, it is true. But she would not know at exactly what time he had come from his room to mail it. There was that disturbing thought again that she would not get his proposal, after all, till the next day. And he wanted her to know that he loved her now—at once. So he told her. Standing there in the hall, unconven- tionally but without thought of:his sur- roundings, or of the timidity which had kept him silent all those long weeks, he poured out the whole story of his adora- tion. ‘“ But—but this is so unexpected!” she gasped when he had finished and paused, breathless, before her. ‘It is so—so seemingly unpremeditated and—and -ap- parently on the spur of the moment, to speak plainly—”’ ‘But it’s not unpremeditated,” he in- terrupted. ‘It’s been going on in my heart for a long time. “ And if you don’t believe it,” he add- ed, ‘look in your mail to-morrow morn- ing. You'll find that I’d already told you this before I saw you to-night.” A moment she faced him. Then, passing swiftly before him, she _ threw over her shoulder as she moved up the hall toward her rooms: “Pll read it to-morrow morning on my way to Spraycliff. You can come there for your answer, if you like. “And,” with her hand on her door- knob, she faced him squarely, ‘‘ come ready to stay the summer—Tom!” EO VOO