got on, came presently a letter—"I now take my pen in hand hoping it finds youse all as it leaves me at present"—and saying little about herself save the bald fact that she was working in a "refined hotel," and getting good pay. At its close she thanked me for past kindness adding with characteristic heartiness, "Youse was awful good to me."
On Christmas morning that year, along with the mountain of highly-embossed declarations of devotion from all and sundry, came one of those irritating customs cards that unfeelingly announce, "1 package from United States," without even the meagerest specifications on which the expanding imagination can feed. Of course, it was days before we got it, for nobody goes downtown after Christmas, and I had time to body forth all sorts of possibilities, pleasing and otherwise. Sheila was the last contingency that would have entered my mind, yet from Sheila it proved to be. And what do you think! it was an elegant fantasia in gold braid and bead embroidery, designed for the embellishment of one's bodice, to be applied or removed at will. It was an expansive glorification of "quite the newest thing," a really handsome and modish acces-
