“Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets——”
“Malted milk tablets!” he said, looking bewildered.
“Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to,” I explained, “Hannah—that’s mother’s maid, you know—brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them.”
“Look here,” he said, “I’m unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn’t the ‘mother’s maid’ rather piling it on?”
“Hannah is mother’s maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets. I should think,” I said, growing sarcastic, “that so far it is clear to the dullest mind.”
“Go on,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “You named the letter for your mother’s maid—I mean for the malted milk. Although you have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly malted people—however, let that go.”
“Valentine’s tablets,” I said. “Of course, you understand,” I said, bending forward, “there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold was made up too—Harold Valentine.”
“I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence.”
“But, after all, there was such a person. That’s clear, isn’t it? And now he considers that we are engaged, and—and he insists on marrying me.”
“That,” he said, “is realy easy to understand. I don’t blame him at all. He is clearly a person of diszernment.”