"Miss K. D. B.
"DEAR MISS:—From the modest and retiring description of your qualities and character, I am led to believe that I will find in you an agreeable life companion. Will you not accord me the great favor of a personal interview? I shall esteem it a high honor. I will be at Luna's Mexican restaurant at seven of the clock P.M. on Monday evening next. May I express the fervent hope that you also will be there? I name the locality because it is quiet and respectable. I shall wear a white marguerite in my buttonhole. Will you also carry a bunch of the same flower?
"Yours to command,
"CAPTAIN JACK."
So great was her interest in the affair that Blix even went out with Condy while he mailed the letters in the nearest box, for he was quite capable of forgetting the whole matter as soon as he was out of the house.
"Now let it work!" she exclaimed as the iron flap clanked down upon the disappearing envelopes. But Condy was suddenly smitten with nameless misgiving. "Now we've done it! now we've done it!" he cried aghast. "I wish we hadn't. We're in a fine fix now."
Still uneasy, he saw Blix back to the flat, and bade her good-by at the door.
But before she went to bed that night, Blix sought out her father, who was still sitting up tinkering with the cuckoo clock, which he had taken all to pieces under the pretext that it was out of order and went too fast.
"Papum," said Blix, sitting down on the rug before him, "did you ever—when you were a pioneer, when you first came out here in the fifties—did you ever play poker?"
"I—oh, well! it was the only amusement the miners had for a long time."
"I want you to teach me."