TOWARD the end of the winter there came a newspaper,
addressed to Miss Irene Lapham; it proved to be a
Texas newspaper, with a complimentary account of the ranch
of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton, which the representative
of the journal had visited.

"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to whom her
daughter brought the paper; "the one he's staying with."

The girl did not say anything, but she carried the
paper to her room, where she scanned every line of it
for another name. She did not find it, but she cut
the notice out and stuck it into the side of her mirror,
where she could read it every morning when she brushed
her hair, and the last thing at night when she looked
at herself in the glass just before turning off the gas.
Her sister often read it aloud, standing behind her
and rendering it with elocutionary effects.

"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the form
of a puff to a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's the style
on the Hill."

Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper,
treating the fact with an importance that he refused to see
in it.

"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded.