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CAMPBELL:“Funny? I’m furious.”

MRS. CAMPBELL:“You know you’re not. Give me the letter, dearest. I know it’s for Margaret Rice, and I shall see her, and just feel round and find out if it isn’t so, and–“

CAMPBELL:“What an idea! You haven’t the slightest evidence that it’s for Miss Rice, or that it isn’t intended for you, and it’s my duty to find out. And nobody is authority but Mr. Welling. And I’m going to him with the corpus delicti.”

MRS. CAMPBELL:“But how can you? Remember how sensitive, how shrinking he is. Don’t, Willis; you mustn’t. It will kill him!”

CAMPBELL:“Well, that may save me considerable bother. If he will simply die of himself, I can’t ask anything better.” He goes on eating his breakfast.

MRS. CAMPBELL,admiring him across the table: “Oh, Willis, how perfectly delightful you are!”

CAMPBELL:“I know; but why?”

MRS. CAMPBELL:“Why, taking it in the nice, sensible way you do. Now, some husbands would be so stupid! Of course you couldn’t think–you couldn’t dream–that the letter was really for me; and yet you might behave very disagreeably, and make me very unhappy, if you were not just the lovely, kind-hearted, magnanimous–“

CAMPBELL,looking up from his coffee: “Oh, hello!”

MRS. CAMPBELL:“Yes; that is what took my fancy in you, Willis: that generosity, that real gentleness, in spite of the brusque way you have. Refinement of the heart, I call it.”

CAMPBELL:“Amy, what are you after?”

MRS. CAMPBELL:“We’ve been married a whole year now–“

CAMPBELL:“Longer, isn’t it?”

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 scrape.”

CAMPBELL:“What a brilliant idea! I’m not in any scrape. 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–“