This excited his senses no end.

"Was I right?" the mail bird asked, from its branch above him.

"No, it's a bill," Cadbury lied. "Made to look like a personal letter." He then pretended to return to his work of gnawing, and after a pause the mail bird, deceived, flapped off and disappeared.

At once Cadbury ceased gnawing, seated himself on a rise of turf, got out his turtle-shell snuff box, took a deep, thoughtful pinch of his preferred mixture, Mrs. Siddon's No. 3 amp; 4, and contemplated in the most profound and keen manner possible whether (a) he ought to reply to Jane Feckless Foundfully's letter at all or simply forget that he had ever received it, or (b) answer it, and if (b) then answer it (b sub one) in a bantering fashion or (b sub two) with possibly a meaningful poem from his Undermeyer's anthology of World Poetry plus several suggestive-of-a-sensitive-nature added notations of his own invention, or possibly even (b sub three) come right out and say something such as:

Dear Miss (Mrs.?) Foundfully,

In answer to your letter, the fact is that I love you, too, and am unhappy in my marital relationship with a woman I do not now and actually never really did love, and also am quite dispirited and pessimistic and dissatisfied by my employment and am consulting Dr. Drat, who in all honesty doesn't seem able to help me a bit, although in all probability it's not his fault but rather due to the severity of my emotional disturbance. Perhaps you and I could get together in the near future and discuss both your situation and mine, and make some progress.

Cordially,

Bob Cadbury (call me Bob,

okay? And I'll call you

Jane, if that's okay).

The problem, however, he realized, consisted in the obvious fact that Hilda would get wind of this and do something dreadful – he had no idea what, only a recognition, melancholy indeed, of its severity. And in addition – but second in order as a problem – how did he know he would like or love, whichever, Miss (or Mrs.) Foundfully in return? Obviously she either knew him directly in some manner which he could not account for or had perhaps heard about him through a mutual friend; in any case she seemed certain of her own emotions and intentions toward him, and that mainly was what mattered.

The situation depressed him. Because how could he tell if this was a way out of his misery or on the contrary a worsening of that same misery in a new direction?

Still seated and taking pinch after pinch of snuff, he pondered many alternatives, including doing away with himself, which seemed in accord with the dramatic nature of Miss Foundfully's letter.

That night, after he arrived home weary and discouraged from his gnawing, had eaten dinner and then retired into his locked study away from Hilda where she probably did not know what he was up to, he got out his Hermes portable typewriter, inserted a page, reflected long and soul-searchingly, and then wrote an answer to Miss Foundfully.

While he lay supine, engrossed in this task, his wife Hilda burst into his locked study. Bits of lock, door and hinges, as well as several screws, flew in all directions.

"What are you doing?" Hilda demanded. "All hunched over your Hermes typewriter like some sort of bug. You look like a horrid little dried-up spider, the way you always do this time of evening."

"I'm writing to the main branch of the library," Cadbury said, in icy dignity, "about a book I returned which they claim I didn't."

"You liar," his wife Hilda said in a frenzy of rage, having now looked over his shoulder and seen the beginning part of his letter. "Who is this Miss Foundfully? Why are you writing her?"

"Miss Foundfully," Cadbury said artfully, "is the librarian who has been assigned to my case."

"Well, I happen to know you're lying," his wife said. "Because /wrote that perfumed fake letter to you to test you. And I was right. You are answering it; I knew it the minute I heard you begin peck-pecking away at the disgusting cheap common typewriter you love so dearly." She then snatched up the typewriter, letter and all, and hurled it through the window of Cadbury's study, into the night darkness.

"My assumption, then," Cadbury managed to say after a time, "is that there is no Miss Foundfully, so there is no point in my getting the flashlight and looking around outside for my Hermes – if it still exists – to finish the letter. Am I correct?"

With a jeering expression, but without lowering herself by answering, his wife stalked from his study, leaving him alone with his assumptions and his tin of Boswell's Best, a snuff mixture far too mild for such an occasion.

Well, Cadbury thought to himself, I guess then I'll never be able to get away from Hilda. And he thought, I wonder what Miss Foundfully would have been like had she really existed. And then he thought, Maybe even though my wife made her up there might be somewhere in the world a real person who would be like I imagine Miss Foundfully – or rather like I imagined before I found out – to be. If you follow me, he thought to himself broodingly. I mean, my wife Hilda can't be all the Miss Foundfullys in the entire world.

The next day at work, alone with the half-gnawed poplar tree, he produced a small note-pad and short pencil, envelope and stamp which he had managed to smuggle out of the house without Hilda noticing. Seated on a slight rise of earth, snuffing meditatively small pinches of Bezoar Fine Grind, he wrote a short note, printed so as to be easily read.

TO WHOMEVER READS THIS!

My name is Bob Cadbury and I am a young, fairly healthy beaver with a broad background in political science and theology, although largely self-taught, and I would like to talk with you about God and The Purpose of Existence and other topics of like ilk. Or we could play chess.

Cordially,

And he thereupon signed his name. For a time he pondered, sniffed an extra large pinch of Bezoar Fine Grind, and then he added:

P.S. Are you a girl? If you are I'll bet you're pretty.

Folding the note up he placed it in a nearly-empty snuff tin, sealed the tin painstakingly with Scotch Tape, and then floated it off down the creek in a direction which he calculated to be somewhat northwest.

Several days passed before he saw, with excitement and glee, a second snuff tin – not the one which he had launched – slowly floating up the creek in a direction which he calculated as southeast.

Dear Mr. Cadbury (the folded-up note within the snuff tin began). My sister and brother are the only non-fud friends I have, and if you're not a fud, the way everyone has been since I got back from Madrid, I'd sure like to meet you. meet you.

There was also a P.S.

P.S. You sound real keen and neat and I'll bet you know a lot about Zen Buddhism.

The letter was signed in a way difficult to read, but at last he made it out as Carol Stickyfoot.

He at once dispatched this note in answer:

Dear Miss (Mrs.?) Stickyfoot,

Are you real or are you somebody made up by my wife? It is essential that I know at once, as I have in the past been tricked and now have to be constantly wary.

Off went the note, floating within its snuff tin in a northwest direction. The answer, when it arrived the following day floating in a southeast direction in a Cameleopard No. 5 snuff tin, read briefly:

Mr. Cadbury, if you think I am a figment of your wife's distorted mind, then you are going to miss out on life.

Very truly yours,

Carol

Well, that's certainly sound advice, Cadbury said to himself as he read and reread the letter. On the other hand, he said to himself, this is almost precisely what I would expect a figment of my wife Hilda's distorted mind to come up with. So what is proved?