Phebe took back the letter and folded it up. "Well?" she said.

"Well?" said Denham, looking at her and smiling.

"It's just like her," declared Phebe. "It's so downright and to the
point. Gerald never wastes words."

"You said it was like a man's letter," said Denham. "But I must beg leave
to differ with you there. I don't think it is at all such a letter as _I_
would have written you, for instance."

"Of course not. It wouldn't be proper for you to say 'Phebe, my dear,' as
Gerald does. Yours would have to be a very dignified, pastoral letter."

"Yes, addressed to 'My Lamb,' which you couldn't object to in a pastoral
letter of course, and which sounds nearly as affectionate, blaming you
for having caused me to lose the valuable information I might have gained
about the Baroness Bunsen. I never got much farther than her birth in
that famous history. I see poor Miss Delano casting longing glances in
here. I'll smuggle her in among you young people."

He departed on his errand of mercy, and soon had the timid little old
maid in the more congenial atmosphere of the parlor, where little by
little, though in a very stealthy and underhand way, the talk grew more
general, and the restraint slackened more and more, until sewing and
reading were both forgotten and the fun became fast and furious,
culminating in the sudden appearance of Jake Dexter dressed up as an
ancient and altogether unlovely old woman, whom Dick Hardcastle presented
in a stage whisper as "Baroness Bunsen in the closing chapter," and who
forthwith proceeded to act out in dumb show the various events of that