"A lot of men are coming for the shooting. Mr. Rivett's manager turned out several thousand pheasants and Hungarian partridges, it seems. The latter, they say, have vanished; the former seem disposed to wander into the front yard.
"Mrs. Lorrimore has departed with much of Judge Wicklow's salary. Her stouter and prettier friend, Mrs. Wemyss, despoiled almost everybody except Silvette and me. This letter is degenerating into gossip. It had to, or I might have been even more indiscreet.
"Jim, you are a good type of citizen when you're at your best. Let me lecture you, won't you? Anyway, you're helpless and in bed and miles away, and you can't prevent me.
"So—be yourself. Go into a man's business. Disregard your accomplishments, your cleverness at paraphrasing art. It doesn't count in real life, all this facility with paint and pen and paper—your gay imitation of painter, writer, composer. They're little gifts, Jim—meant for an hour of light leisure among the leisured—pleasant, but unimportant accomplishments. When you court some nice girl, some day, you'll understand their full value—which is to amuse her, and later, I prophesy, the jolly little family of a home-returning business man.
"The years are before you still, Jim. Open the battle when you're well enough. You will win out, for you are really not the man I have known. I wish I might have been a woman to bring out what you really are. Some woman will. Meanwhile give a friendly hand and a generous lift to a fellow who deserves your respect and consideration—your other self.
"Good-by and good luck.
"Your cousin,
"DIANA TENNANT."
In a few days Edgerton began to experience the intolerable sensations of a bone which is mending itself.
He had become very restless and impatient; and, finally, the doctor let him wear his arm in a sling and go out to hunt for a job.