kinder vacant look, to me. But the other night I was took awful sudden
with one of them horrible attacks of indigestion I'm subject to--we'd had
rhubarb pie for supper, an' 'twas just elegant, but I guess I ate too
much of it, an' the telephone wouldn't work on account of the
thunderstorm we'd had that day--seems like that there'd been a lot of
them this season--so Joe had to hitch up an' go for the doctor. As he
went past the cemetery, he see Edith leanin' over the fence with that
no-count Jack Weston--an' it was past midnight, too!"

In the midst of such general satisfaction, it was perhaps inevitable that
at least one person should not be pleased. And that person, as will be
readily guessed, was Thomas. Sylvia, thinking the blow might fall more
bearably from his brother's hand than from hers, relegated the task of
writing him to Austin; and Austin, with a wicked twinkle in his eye,
wrote him in this wise:

DEAR THOMAS:

When you made that little break that I warned you against this spring,
Sylvia probably offered to be a sister to you. I believe that is usual on
such occasions. You have doubtless noticed that she is exceptionally
truthful for a girl, so--largely to keep her word to you, perhaps--she
decided a little while ago to marry me. Of course, I tried to dissuade
her from this plan, but you know she is also stubborn. There seems to be
nothing for me to do but to fall in with it. I don't know yet when the
execution is going to take place, and though, of course, it would be a
relief in a way if I did, I am not finding the death sentence without its
compensations. Why don't you come home over some Sunday, and see how well
I am bearing up? Sylvia told me to ask you, with her love, or I should
not bother, for I am naturally a little loath, even now, to have so