Fennel and Rue | Page 7

your
meaning. The thing's in the only shape we could possibly give it, and I
am satisfied to leave it in Armiger's hands. I'm certain he will deal
wisely with it-and kindly."
"Yes, I'm sure he'll deal kindly. I should be very unhappy if he didn't.
He could easily deal more wisely, though, than she has."
Verrian chose not to follow his mother in this. "All is," he said, with
finality, "I hope she'll never see that loathsome paragraph."
"Oh, very likely she won't," his mother consoled him.

III.
Only four days after he had seen Armiger, Verrian received an

envelope covering a brief note to himself from the editor, a copy of the
letter he had written to Verrian's unknown correspondent, and her
answer in the original. Verrian was alone when the postman brought
him this envelope, and he could indulge a certain passion for method
by which he read its contents in the order named; if his mother had
been by, she would have made him read the girl's reply first of all.
Armiger wrote:
"MY DEAR VERRIAN,--I enclose two exhibits which will possess
you of all the facts in the case of the young lady who feared she might
die before she read the end of your story, but who, you will be glad to
find, is likely to live through the year. As the story ends in our October
number, she need not be supplied with advance sheets. I am sorry the
house hurried out a paragraph concerning the matter, but it will not be
followed by another. Perhaps you will feel, as I do, that the incident is
closed. I have not replied to the writer, and you need not return her
letter. Yours ever, "M. ARMIGER."
The editor's letter to the young lady read:
"DEAR MADAM,--Mr. P. S. Verrian has handed me your letter of the
4th, and I need not tell you that it has interested us both.
"I am almost as much gratified as he by the testimony your request
bears to the importance of his work, and if I could have acted upon my
instant feeling I should have had no hesitation in granting it, though it
is so very unusual as to be, in my experience as an editor,
unprecedented. I am sure that you would not have made it so frankly if
you had not been prepared to guard in return any confidence placed in
you; but you will realize that as you are quite unknown to us, we
should not be justified in taking a step so unusual as you propose
without having some guarantee besides that which Mr. Verrian and I
both feel from the character of your letter. Simply, then, for purposes of
identification, as the phrase is, I must beg you to ask the pastor of your
church, or, better still, your family physician, to write you a line saying
that he knows you, as a sort of letter of introduction to me. Then I will
send you the advance proofs of Mr. Verrian's story. You may like to
address me personally in the care of the magazine, and not as the editor.
"Yours very respectfully, "M. ARMIGER."
The editor's letter was dated the 6th of the month; the answer, dated the
8th, betrayed the anxious haste of the writer in replying, and it was not

her fault if what she wrote came to Verrian when he was no longer able
to do justice to her confession. Under the address given in her first
letter she now began, in, a hand into which a kindlier eye might have
read a pathetic perturbation:
"DEAR SIR,--I have something awful to tell you. I might write pages
without making you think better of me, and I will let you think the
worst at once. I am not what I pretended to be. I wrote to Mr. Verrian
saying what I did, and asking to see the rest of his story on the impulse
of the moment. I had been reading it, for I think it is perfectly
fascinating; and a friend of mine, another girl, and I got together trying
to guess how he would end it, and we began to dare each other to write
to him and ask. At first we did not dream of doing such a thing, but we
went on, and just for the fun of it we drew lots to see which should
write to him. The lot fell to me; but we composed that letter together,
and we put in about my dying for a joke. We never intended to send it;
but then one thing led to another, and I signed it with my real name and
we sent it. We did not really expect to hear anything from it, for