three months. . . . An' my missus gone too--poor tender heart--an'
lookin' down on me, that was rash enough to bet her sixpence on it,
an' now no means to pay up."

"Who was the other?" demanded Nicky-Nan, frowning over the letter,
his face flushing as he frowned.

"You're goin' to read it to me, ben't you?"

"Damned if I do," answered Nicky-Nan curtly. "But I'd like to know
who wrote it."

"It don't stand with Government reggilations, as _I_ read 'em," said
Lippity-Libby, "for a postman to be tellin' who wrote every 'nonymous
letter he carries. . . . Well, I be wastin' time; but if you'll take
my advice, Mr Nanjivell, and it isn' too late, you'll marry a woman.
She'll probably increase your comfort, and--I don't care who she is--
she'll work out another woman that writes 'nonymous. Like a stoat in
a burrow she will, specially if she happens to take in washin' same
as my lost Sarah did. She was shown a 'nonymous letter with 'Only
charitable to warn' in it. Dang me, if she didn' go straight an'
turn up a complaint about 'One chemise torn in wash,' an' showed me
how, though sloped different ways, the letters were alike, twiddles
an' all, to the very daps. I wouldn' believe it at the time, the
party bein' a female in good position. But my wife was certain of
it, an' all the more because she never allowed to her last breath
that the woman's shimmy had been torn at all. Well, so long!"


Nicky-Nan carried the letter indoors to his small, dark sitting-room,