folded up her letter, put it into an envelope, sealed it, crushed it undirected into a little brown muff she carried, and stamped out of the room in the same mad manner. I didn't connect her at first with the plucky girl in the street who had dropped the kumquats, in spite of the fact that they both carried small brown muffs and that I had seen the kumquat girl bear her basket of wet fruit, open to the gaze of everybody, straight to the desk of this hotel with the air of a young page bearing a crown on a sofa pillow. I'd been writing at that desk for five minutes, fully, when suddenly I saw this staring at me on a fresh blotter. It reads backward on the blotter of course, but it's clear as day. See? 'Kumquats, indeed, and pouring pitchforks!'"
Thomas Hornby handed an oblong blotter across the table to his mother.
"Why, there's more below," she smiled, adjusting her glasses as she leaned toward the light.
"There's a whole lot more," he laughed. "The pad must just have had a fresh blotter, for it was criss-crossed with only her handwriting. She wrote very rapidly, and used a stub pen, and I guess I've got her entire letter right here in this room. After I'd made out a sentence or two I slipped the whole blotter out of the pad, folded it up and brought it along. If we hold it up to
