W. W. (depressed): It will be an awfully difficult letter to write.
Tintinnabulum (exultant): Fearfully.
W. W.: I don’t think Patricia could do it.
Tintinnabulum: Not she. I’ll do it. Then you copy my letter and she copies yours.
W. W.: 3d.?
Tintinnabulum: Tons more than that.
This scheme was carried out, Tintinnabulum, after a thoughtful study of Patricia’s epistolary style, producing something in this manner, no doubt with the holy look on his face that is always there when he knows he is concocting a masterpiece. (I regret that he has forgotten what he said in the introductory passage, which dealt in an artful feminine manner with her garments and was probably a beauty.)
“Darling Doubly Doubly,
... oh dear, I am so unhappy because I fear the match between darlingest mummy and Mr. K. is not to be hit off. Oh dear, she blows hot and cold and it makes me bleed to see the poor man’s anguishes, and you and me wanting it so much. If only I could think of a lady-like way to tell mummy that we know she wants it and that we want her to go ahead, but I cannot, and it would need a wonder of a man to do it. Oh dear, how lovely it would be, oh dear, how I wish I knew some frightfully clever person, oh dear——”
“I stopped there,” Tintinnabulum told me. “I meant to put in a lot more before I finished, but I wouldn’t let myself go on.”