“I give you up,” said Ponty. “You're in one of your mystifying moods, and your long-suffering friends must wait until it passes.” Then nodding towards the open letter in her lap, “Whom's your letter from?” he asked.
“I don't know,” said Ruth, smiling with what seemed to him artificial brightness.
“Don't know? Haven't you read it?” he demanded.
“Oh yes, I've read it. But I don't know whom it's from, because it isn't signed. It's what they call anonymous,” Ruth suavely answered. “Now isn't that exciting?”
“Anonymous?” cried Ponty, bristling up.
“Who on earth can be writing anonymous letters to a child like you? What's it about?”
“By the oddest of coincidences,” said Ruth, “it's about you.”
“About me?” Ponty faltered, a hundred new wrinkles adding themselves to his astonished brow: “An anonymous letter—to you—about me?”
“Yes,” said Ruth pleasantly. “Would you care to read it?” She held it up to him. He took it.
Written in a weak and sprawling hand, clearly feminine, on common white paper, it ran, transliterated into the conventional spelling of our day, as follows:—