"Look here--it's like this! I'm such a duffer at explaining, or I'd have told you last night. My cousin, Lenox Clifford, has come over to England with the American contingent. He has just thirty-six hours' leave, and he rushed over to Petteridge to see the Burritts. Lenox and I were brought up together; I've stayed whole months with them when Uncle Carr had a ranch in New Mexico. It was Lenox who taught me to ride, and to fish, and to row, and to skate. There's no one in the world so clever as Lenox! It's his birthday to-day. It was for him I wanted to get those cigarettes--I thought he'd like them in camp. I couldn't think of anything else to send him that he could pack among his kit. Well, he's going off this week to the front, and, as likely as not, he'll be killed right away, and I'll never see him in this world again. It makes me crazy to think of it. He's only ten miles away, and I mayn't even say good-bye to him. Lenox, who's called me his 'little indispensable' ever since I was four! If he was killed, and I hadn't had one last word with him, I'd break my heart. Yes, I would! You English girls are so cold--you laugh at me because I feel red-hot about things."