Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/105

the family notified me recently had been sent by parcel post. Then the conversation switched to girls and old Payne claimed he had the most devoted one in all California. Frazer began boasting about his, and before we knew it, they were pulling out their respective letters and each was trying to prove that his was far more in love with him than the other. Eaton and I were to act as judges. Payne's turned out to be a nice, sensible girl who had just had the measles, and said "Dear Mart," and "Oh I wish you were here," and "As ever yours, Dinah." . . . Frazer's was a bright little thing, very peppy and with lots of interesting things to say. But she didn't rant much about her love, and couldn't have used the word "Dear" more than three or four times in the body of the letter. Eaton wouldn't wait long enough to hand out a decision after this. He pulled open one of his own and it beat the other two all hollow. His beloved began with "Dearest, darling, honeybunchingest, loveydovey Robinson," and filled up the whole affair with such absolute nonsense on how she couldn't stand his absence another minute and how she wanted to fly to him, that we were shrieking with laughter before he had read five lines. He got the prize which happened to be a forty pound pot of lead melted from shrapnel balls. He can lug it back to America if he wishes.