“For a young thing your ideas are not bad, though your problem is entangled in foolish convention, personal pride and so on.  But neither you nor I was born to set the world right.  Now cheer up and think no more about it for the present.  Be ready at two o’clock to go to the park with me.  The superintendent’s child is ill again.”

Having delivered her prescription, Dr. Prue left, and her patient returned to her hearth-stone and an endeavour to be honest with herself.  Virginia had interrupted this most difficult process with her fairy-tale.  While it could not be said to bear upon the situation, after she had left Margaret Elizabeth was conscious of a faint lightening of the fog.

As they sped smoothly toward the park, in the new electric, Margaret Elizabeth driving, Dr. Prue exclaimed, “There, I’m forgetting that letter again.”  Unfastening her bag she held it open while she continued, “I hope you’ll forgive whoever is to blame, but when the hall was being cleaned yesterday, James fished this out of the umbrella jar.  Dear knows how it got there or when; it looks as if it had been in a shipwreck.”  She produced a stained and sorry-looking missive from her bag.  “You can just make out the address, the postmark is quite gone,” she added, laying it in her companion’s lap.  “You haven’t missed an important letter, have you?”

“Not that I know of,” Margaret Elizabeth replied with a laugh that was a bit unsteady.  “It is probably nothing of value.”  She kept her gaze on the road ahead.  “Just slip it in my pocket, please.”

All the rest of the way to the park her heart thumped uncomfortably.  Could it be?  Of course not, it was an advertisement.  Why get excited?  Meanwhile she chatted pleasantly with Dr. Prue.

“All you need is fresh air and a simple life for a while.  Your colour has come back wonderfully,” the doctor remarked as they drew up at the cottage gate.  “Will you wait for me here?”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go into the park, and if I’m not back by the time you are ready, don’t wait.  I can take the street car.”

Turning in at the entrance to the park, Margaret Elizabeth was for a fleeting moment aware of a Candy Wagon standing at the curb a few yards away.  There was nothing unusual in this except the odd way in which it fitted into the situation, and the next moment she had forgotten everything but the letter in her hand.

She walked slowly down the path.  The April sunshine sifted through a faint and feathery greenness overhead, the air was clear and fresh.  She was thinking that she had seen just one little scrap of the Candy Man’s writing—­on the card accompanying the Christmas basket; and this on the letter was blurred and stained, yet she was sure of it.  He had written.  She had been sure he would.  She was glad.  She would be honest with herself.  She wanted him for a friend.  In many ways she liked him better than any one she had met this winter.  She wanted to know more about him.