MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER
Grand Hotel, Toulon,
December 20.
My Wingless Angel,
It's lucky your poor dear hair is getting conspicuous by its absence, or it would stand up on end, I don't doubt, when you read a few lines farther. So, you see, even baldness is a blessing in disguise.
I won't keep you in suspense. The worst shall come first; after all that's happened I don't mind such a little thing as an anti-climax in writing to my indulgent and uncritical Dad.
Now for it.
I have deserted Aunt Mary and Jimmy Payne in a gorge. I am alone in a hotel-with Brown. Yet I ask you to suspend judgment; I have not exactly eloped.
It is all Jimmy Payne's fault.
I wired you yesterday from Marseilles, because I hadn't written since my second letter from Pau, when I told you how Aunt Mary had persuaded me that it would be perfectly caddish not to invite Jimmy to drive with us to the Riviera, as his car was there and he was going that way. I felt in my bones to an almost rheumatic extent that to ask him would be a big mistake; still, in a weak moment I consented, when Jimmy had been particularly nice and had just paid you a whole heap of compliments. I lay awake nearly all night afterwards, thinking whether 'twere nobler in the mind of Molly to hurt Brown's feelings or Jimmy's, since injury must be dealt to one. Finally, I tossed up for it in the sanctity of my chamber. Heads, Brown drives; tails, Jimmy; and it was tails. Well, I'd vowed that should settle it, so I wouldn't go back on myself; and, anyhow, Jimmy was the guest, so that French copper had the rights of it. I did my best to make all straight with the Lightning Conductor, who behaved like the trump he is.