Mrs. Chilton hesitated, pursed her lips, then picked up a letter near
her.

"I'll read it to you," she said. "It's from a Miss Della Wetherby at
Dr. Ames' Sanatorium."

"All right. Fire away," directed the man, throwing himself at full
length on to the couch near his wife's chair.

But his wife did not at once "fire away." She got up first and covered
her husband's recumbent figure with a gray worsted afghan. Mrs.
Chilton's wedding day was but a year behind her. She was forty-two
now. It seemed sometimes as if into that one short year of wifehood
she had tried to crowd all the loving service and "babying" that had
been accumulating through twenty years of lovelessness and loneliness.
Nor did the doctor--who had been forty-five on his wedding day, and
who could remember nothing but loneliness and lovelessness--on his
part object in the least to this concentrated "tending." He acted,
indeed, as if he quite enjoyed it--though he was careful not to show
it too ardently: he had discovered that Mrs. Polly had for so long
been Miss Polly that she was inclined to retreat in a panic and dub
her ministrations "silly," if they were received with too much notice
and eagerness. So he contented himself now with a mere pat of her hand
as she gave the afghan a final smooth, and settled herself to read the
letter aloud.

"My dear Mrs. Chilton," Della Wetherby had written. "Just six times I
have commenced a letter to you, and torn it up; so now I have decided
not to 'commence' at all, but just to tell you what I want at once. I