Molly Make-Believe

ew. "It would have been rather pleasant," he mused "to know who 'we' were." Almost childishly his face

verted very naturally to the tantalizing, evasive, sweetly spicy fragrance of the 'Molly' episode-be

ysterious odor of cinnamon roses that lurked in the accompanying letter. "There's some dreadful mistake somewhere," he insisted. Then suddenl

ote sternly, with many ferocious

any correspondence whatsoever,-no matter how exhilarating from either a 'Gray-Plush Squirrel' or a 'Banda Sea Pirate' as evidenced by enclosed photog

truly

anton was still hopefully expecting an answer. Nor was he altogether disappointed. Just before midn

ite certain that you will be altogether satisfied in the long run with the material offered you. As for the photograph recently forwarded to you, kindly accept our apologies

y in satin, or simple in gingham, or deliciously hoydenish in fishing-clothes, they challenged his surprised attention. Blonde, brunette, tall, short, posing with wi

es she think I'm going to risk choosing a tom-boy girl if the gentle little creature with the pansies is really herself? Or suppose she truly is the enchanting l

hanging the address hurried the messenger boy off to remail it. Just

rial-Let

at I am looking for, but a definite likeness of 'Molly' herself. Ki

to think how the terrible threat about refunding the money

en he opened the big express package that arrived the next

a fair, honest, every-day portrait of my father's and mother's composite features-but a picture of myself! Hooray for you! A picture, then, not of my physiognomy, but of my personality. Very well, sir. Here is the portrait-true to the life-in this great, clumsy, conglomerate package of articles that represent-perhaps-not even so much the prosy, literal things that I am, as the much more illuminating and significant things that I would like to be. It's what we would 'like to be' that really tells most about us, isn't it

hought furrows faces you know, and after Adolescence only Inanity retains its heavenly smoothness. Beauty even at its worst is a gorgeously perfect, flower-sprinkled lawn over which the most ordinary, every-day errands of life cannot cross without scarring. And brains at their best are only a ploughed field teeming always and forever with the worries of incalculable

ol

h, Stanton began to unwrap the various packages that comprised the large

usly stubby, and rather confusingly boyish. After that, round and flat and tantalizing as an empty plate, the phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar song-"The Sea Gull's Cry":

mire an' f

ld this wor

done no g

drop it if

ilky blue forget-me-nots-the threaded needle still jabbed in the work-and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Br

nd though I have the gift of Prophecy-and all knowledge-so that I could remove Mountains, and have not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing. And

-Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. A Sense of Humor never faileth. But whether there be unpleasant prophecies they shall fail, whether there be scolding tongues they shall cease,

rity, these three. But the greate

ike the fragments of any other jig-saw puzzle. Was the young lady as intellectual as the Robert Browning poems suggested, or did she mean simply to imply that she wished she were? And did the tom-boyish sli

even knew that it was almost morning. And when he finally woke again he found