Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/263



R. BLACK opened the door of his hotel apartment in Washington one sultry noon in response to a vigorous, prolonged rapping from without. The bell-boy handed him a telegram. When Mr. Black had read the long message he smiled and frowned, but cheerfully paid the three dollars and forty-one cents additional charges that the messenger demanded.

It was Mabel's message; the clerk had transmitted it faithfully, even to the two mis-spelled words that had proved too much for the excited little writer. If the receiving clerk had not considerately tucked in a few periods for the sake of clearness, there would have been no punctuation marks, because, as everybody knows, very few 239