and kiddies. All the same--" he ruminated suddenly: "All the same I'll
wager that there's an awfully decent little brain working away behind
all that red ink and nonsense."

Still grinning he conjured up the vision of some grim-faced
spinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at last
for the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance,
rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously human
Saturday night crowd at the village post-office--herself the only
person whose expected letter never failed to come! From Squirrel or
Pirate or Hopping Hottentot--what did it matter to her? Just the
envelope alone was worth the price of the subscription. How the
pink-cheeked high school girls elbowed each other to get a peep at the
post-mark! How the--. Better still, perhaps some hopelessly unpopular
man in a dingy city office would go running up the last steps just a
little, wee bit faster--say the second and fourth Mondays in the
month--because of even a bought, made-up letter from Mary Queen of
Scots that he knew absolutely without slip or blunder would be
waiting there for him on his dusty, ink-stained desk among all the
litter of bills and invoices concerning--shoe leather. Whether 'Mary
Queen of Scots' prattled pertly of ancient English politics, or
whimpered piteously about dull-colored modern fashions--what did it
matter so long as the letter came, and smelled of faded
fleur-de-lis--or of Darnley's tobacco smoke? Altogether pleased by the
vividness of both these pictures Stanton turned quite amiably to his
breakfast and gulped down a lukewarm bowl of milk without half his
usual complaint.

[Illustration: "Good enough!" he chuckled]