Mrs. Campbell: "--And I haven't known you do an unkind thing, a brutal thing."

Campbell: "Well, I understand the banging around hardly ever begins much under two years."

Mrs. Campbell: "How _sweet_ you are! And you're _so_ funny always!"

Campbell: "Come, come, Amy; get down to business. What is it you do want?"

Mrs. Campbell: "You won't go and tease that poor boy about his letter, will you? Just hand it to him, and say you suppose here is something that has come into your possession by mistake, and that you wish to restore it to him, and then--just run off."

Campbell: "With my parasol in one hand, and my skirts caught up in the other?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Oh, how good! Of course I was imagining how _I_ should do it."

Campbell: "Well, a man can't do it that way. He would look silly." He rises from the table, and comes and puts his arm round her shoulders.

"But you needn't be afraid of my being rough with him. Of course it's a mistake; but he's a fellow who will enter into the joke too; he'll enjoy it; he'll--" He merges his sentence in a kiss on her upturned lips, and she clings to his hand with her right, pressing it fondly to her cheek.

"I shall do it in a man's way; but I guess you'll approve of it quite as much."

Mrs. Campbell: "I know I shall. That's what I like about you, Willis: your being so helplessly a man always."

Campbell: "Well, that's what attracted me to you, Amy; your manliness."

Mrs. Campbell: "And I liked your _finesse_. You are awfully inventive, Willis. Why, Willis, I've just thought of something. Oh, it would be _so_ good if you only would!"

Campbell: "Would what?"

Mrs. Campbell: "Invent something now to get us out of the sc.r.a.pe."

Campbell: "What a brilliant idea! _I'm_ not in any sc.r.a.pe. And as for Mr. Welling, I don't see how you could help him out unless you sent this letter to Miss Rice, and asked her to send yours back--"

Mrs. Campbell, springing to her feet: "Willis, you are inspired! Oh, how perfectly delightful! And it's so delicate of you to think of that! I will just enclose his note--give it here, Willis--and he need never know that it ever went to the wrong address. Oh, I always felt that you were _truly_ refined, anyway." He pa.s.sively yields the letter, and she whirls away to a writing-desk in the corner of the room. "Now, I'll just keep a copy of the letter--for a joke; I think I've a perfect right to"--scribbling furiously away--"and then I'll match the paper with an envelope--I can do that perfectly--and then I'll just imitate his hand--such fun!--and send it flying over to Margaret Rice. Oh, _how_ good! Touch the bell, Willis;" and then--as the serving-maid appears--"Yes, Jane! Run right across the lawn to Mrs. Rice's, and give this letter for Miss Margaret, and say it was left here by mistake.

Well, it _was_, Willis. Fly, Jane! Oh, Willis, love! Isn't it perfect!

Of course she'll have got his formal reply to my invitation, and be all mixed up by it, and now when this note comes, she'll see through it all in an instant, and it will be such a relief to her; and oh, she'll think that he's directed _both_ the letters to her because he couldn't think of any one else! Isn't it lovely? Just like anything that's nice, it's ten times as nice as you expected it to be; and--"

Campbell: "But hold on, Amy!" He lifts a note from the desk. "You've sent your copy. Here's the original now. She'll think you've been playing some joke on her."

Mrs. Campbell, clutching the letter from him, and scanning it in a daze: "_What!_ Oh, my goodness! It is! I have! Oh, I shall die! Run! Call her back! Shriek, Willis!" They rush to the window together. "No, no! It's too late! She's given it to their man, and now nothing can save me! Oh, Willis! Willis! Willis! This is all your fault, with that fatal suggestion of yours. Oh, if you had only left it to me I never should have got into such a sc.r.a.pe! She will think now that I've been trying to hoax her, and she's perfectly implacable at the least hint of a liberty, and she'll be ready to kill me. I don't know _what_ she won't do. Oh, Willis, how _could_ you get me into this!"

Campbell, irately: "Get you into this! Now, Amy, this is a little too much. You got yourself into it. You urged me to think of something--"

Mrs. Campbell: "Well, do, Willis, _do_ think of something, or I shall go mad! Help me, Willis! Don't be so heartless--so unfeeling."

Campbell: "There's only one thing now, and that is to make a clean breast of it to Welling, and get him to help us out. A word from him can make everything right, and we can't take a step without him; we can't move!"

Mrs. Campbell: "I can't let you. Oh, isn't it horrible!"

Campbell: "Yes; a nice thing is always ten times nicer than you expected it to be!"

Mrs. Campbell: "Oh, how can you stand there mocking me? Why don't you go to him at once, and tell him the whole thing, and beg him, implore him, to help us?"

Campbell: "Why, you just told me I mustn't!"

Mrs. Campbell: "You didn't expect me to say you might, did you? Oh, how cruel!" She whirls out of the room, and Campbell stands in a daze, in which he is finally aware of Mr. Arthur Welling, seen through the open window, on the veranda without. Mr. Welling, with a terrified and furtive air, seems to be fixed to the spot where he stands.

II

_MR. WELLING; MR. CAMPBELL_

Campbell: "Why, Welling, what the devil are you doing there?"

Welling: "Trying to get away."

Campbell: "To get away? But you sha'n't, man! I won't let you. I was just going to see you. How long have you been there?"

Welling: "I've just come."

Campbell: "What have you heard?"

Welling: "Nothing--nothing. I was knocking on the window-casing to make _you_ hear, but you seemed preoccupied."

Campbell: "Preoccupied! convulsed! cataclysmed! Look here: we're in a box, Welling. And you've got us into it." He pulls Welling's note out of his pocket, where he has been keeping his hand on it, and pokes it at him. "Is that yours?"

Welling, examining it with bewilderment mounting into anger: "It's mine; yes. May I ask, Mr. Campbell, how you came to have this letter?"

Campbell: "May I ask, Mr. Welling, how you came to write such a letter to my wife?"

Welling: "To your wife? To Mrs. Campbell? I never wrote any such letter to her."

Campbell: "Then you addressed it to her."

Welling: "Impossible!"

Campbell: "Impossible? I think I can convince you, much as I regret to do so." He makes search about Mrs. Campbell's letters on the table first, and then on the writing-desk. "We have the envelope. It came amongst a lot of letters, and there's no mistake about it." He continues to toss the letters about, and then desists. "But no matter; I can't find it; Amy's probably carried it off with her. There's no mistake about it. I was going to have some fun with you about it, but now you can have some fun with me. Whom did you send Mrs. Campbell's letter to?"

Welling: "Mrs. Campbell's letter?"

Campbell: "Oh, pshaw! your acceptance or refusal, or whatever it was, of her garden fandango. You got an invitation?"

Welling: "Of course."

Campbell: "And you wrote to accept it or decline it at the same time that you wrote this letter here to some one else. And you addressed two envelopes before you put the notes in either. And then you put them into the wrong envelopes. And you sent this note to my wife, and the other note to the other person--"

Welling: "No, I didn't do anything of the kind!" He regards Campbell with amazement, and some apparent doubt of his sanity.

Campbell: "Well, then, Mr. Welling, will you allow me to ask what the deuce you did do?"