The editor, somewhat alarmed, stammered “Yes.” But the next moment he was reassured. The wrinkles disappeared, a dozen dimples broke out where they had been, and the determined, matter-of-fact Mrs. Dimmidge burst into a fit of rosy merriment. Again and again she laughed, shaking the building, startling the sedate, melancholy woods beyond, until the editor himself laughed in sheer vacant sympathy.
“Lordy!” she said at last, gasping, and wiping the laughter from her wet eyes. “I never thought of THAT.”
“No,” explained the editor smilingly; “of course you didn't. Don't you see, the papers that copied the big advertisement never saw that little paragraph, or if they did, they never connected the two together.”
“Oh, it ain't that,” said Mrs. Dimmidge, trying to regain her composure and holding her sides. “It's that blessed DEAR old dunderhead of a Dimmidge I'm thinking of. That gets me. I see it all now. Only, sakes alive! I never thought THAT of him. Oh, it's just too much!” and she again relapsed behind her handkerchief.
“Then I suppose you don't want to reply to it,” said the editor.
Her laughter instantly ceased. “Don't I?” she said, wiping her face into its previous complacent determination. “Well, young man, I reckon that's just what I WANT to do! Now, wait a moment; let's see what he said,” she went on, taking up and reperusing the “Personal” paragraph. “Well, then,” she went on, after a moment's silent composition with moving lips, “you just put these lines in.”
The editor took up his pencil.
“To Mr. J. D. Dimmidge.—Hope you're still on R. B.'s tracks. Keep there!—E. J. D.”
The editor wrote down the line, and then, remembering Mr. Dimmidge's voluntary explanation of HIS “Personal,” waited with some confidence for a like frankness from Mrs. Dimmidge. But he was mistaken.
“You think that he—R. B.—or Mr. Dimmidge—will understand this?” he at last asked tentatively. “Is it enough?”