though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that
sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone
back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no
attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect?
Why _should_ she have wanted to marry you?

I shall see you probably in another fortnight.

You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where
they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what
we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them
winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such
beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is _so_ impulsively democratic."
Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge
our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,

JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.

_From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York._

Muetterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last
spring--the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display
of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping.
Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of
marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains
lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in
learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all
animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm
the fittest--twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just
how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate