Sweethearts unmet Author:Berta Ruck Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A LOVE-LETTER The Boy't Story THIS evening directly I had swallowed my quiet old meal I got the table cleared and sat down to write. Funn... more »y to think that this was my first shot at— yes, a love-letter. Funny that it should be to a girl whose very name I didn't know. That didn't make any difference. I loved her all right. I knew that, for certain since this morning when her looking at me like that went through me like a knife, and I just meant to tell her so. Difficulty was how to address her. " Dear Madam? " Too much like a shop acknowledging an esteemed cheque. " Young lady ? " No; the way some people call out to the waitress in a tea-room. " Jill" was my own little name for her, but that wouldn't do straight away, of course. Pity there's no translating the French way of beginning " Mademoiselle! " which is pretty and respectful and yet might be taken in an affectionate sense as well; " ma Demoiselle "—" my lady! " That was what she meant to me, after all. Well! Why not? Having got that start, I could begin scribbling away on my pad with the fountain-pen I'd kept right fromthe beginning of the War; (not so surprising perhaps when you consider how few letters I'd had to write.) I wrote now, and Jove, I found I was making up for those reams I hadn't written before to those folks at home that I hadn't had. I found myself doing what I never thought I should do in this world, putting down on paper things I'd not mentioned to a living soul. Funny, wasn't it? To this little maiden that I didn't know anything about except that she passed down a certain street every morning wearing a purple hat and carrying a brown leather case, and that she'd turned me down with a crash for venturing to say " good- morning " to her—to this girl I wrote as I'd ne...« less