Mrs. Dostal was arguing with Granny over the fence when Tugs got home. Tugs took advantage of their distraction and knocked at the Dostals’ door. Mr. Dostal answered wearing just his undershirt and pants and looking like he’d just woken up.

“Yep?” he said.

“Is Mr. Moore at home?”

“Nope,” said Mr. Dostal.

Tugs sighed.

“OK,” she said, and Mr. Dostal started to close the door.

“Do you know when he’s going to be back?” she asked hopefully.

“Nope.” Mr. Dostal started to close the door once more.

“Wait!” said Tugs. Mr. Dostal opened the door again and raised his eyebrows.

“Did he teach you to sail yet? Mrs. Dostal said he was going to teach you to sail.”

“We don’t have a lake,” said Mr. Dostal. This time he left the door open but started to walk away.

“Did he fix your Ford?”

Mr. Dostal stopped, turned around, and came back to the door. He was looking a little more awake.

“No, he hasn’t, now that you mention it. No, he has not. In fact, he hasn’t fixed the sink, either, like he said, or picked up the tab for groceries, or repaid the small loan I gave him to send back home to his ailing mother. Well, I’ll be jiggered.”

“I was just wondering,” said Tugs, and she walked down the steps and across the lawn to her own house, waving to Mrs. Dostal and Granny as she went in the door.

Her mother was waiting for her.

“Look,” said Mother Button. “You got mail.” She held out a crisp white envelope embossed along the edge with a line drawing of a tree and lake entwined with an address in small type.

Mail. Tugs had only gotten mail once before in her life when Aunt Fiona had sent her a postcard. Georgia was spelled out in fat letters across the front, and inside each one was a picture featuring some aspect of Georgia life, which, surprisingly, didn’t look so different from life in Iowa. On the back was a note Tugs still knew by heart.

Dearest Niece,
Peach pie, pecan pie, cotton plants, ocean. People of every sort. Home soon.
Love, AF

But this was an envelope, licked and sealed and stamped.

Tugs looked it over front and back. There was her own name, hand-printed smartly on the front. She handed it back to her mother, who slid a knife under the flap, making a neat slice at the top.

Tugs opened the edges of the envelope and peered inside. She pulled out a folded sheet of paper that matched the envelope. She sank into a kitchen chair and laid it flat on the table. Her eyes skimmed directly to the bottom of the letter.

“Your friend, Aggie, it says! Aggie Millhouse! Aggie wrote me a letter!”

“Would you fancy that?” said her mother. “Read the whole thing.”

“Dear Tugs,” she read. “Dear!”

“Go on,” said Mother Button. “That’s how most letters begin.”

Tugs smoothed the letter with her hand and read it again, silently.

Dear Tugs,

It is Monday. I’m at camp. They make us write letters here every day. I am writing to you first of my friends. It’s hot here, but we get to swim in the lake. They make us do crafts, but there is also archery. I’m going to ask for a bow and arrow for my next birthday. I hit the hay bale five out of ten times, a record for beginners, they said. I wish you were here. I bet you’d be good at archery, too. I brought my ribbon from the three-legged. It’s hanging on my bunk. See you in the funny pages.

Your friend,

Aggie Millhouse

“Well,” said Mother Button. “You’d better write back. Granny has stationery around here somewhere.” She walked to the door and called Granny.

Granny hobbled into the house and hung her cane over a kitchen chair. “She’s going to write a letter to a Millhouse?” She wobbled around the room looking for her stationery box. “Who does she think she . . . ?”

Mother Button interrupted her. “Aggie Millhouse has written to Tugs from camp. We need some nice paper, now, Granny. The best you’ve got.”

“It’s all the best,” Granny sniffed. “Here.” She held out a long, thin box. “I suppose you’ll want to use one of my nice ink pens, too.”

“Oh, no,” said Tugs, taking the box from Granny. “I’ll use pencil. And an eraser.”

She looked through the papers. There was white, cream, light blue, and green. She liked the green best, but Aggie, she thought, would prefer blue.

She pulled out one blue sheet and a matching envelope.

“What are you going to say?” asked Granny, standing over Tugs as she picked up her pencil. Mother Button stood by, too, watching.

“I don’t know,” said Tugs. “But I think I need to write it in private.”

“Well!” said Granny.

“Let her be,” said Mother Button. “Here, Tugs. Take a magazine to your room to write on.”

Tugs took the Good Housekeeping and her paper and pencil to her room and shut the door.

She propped herself on her bed and poised her pencil over the page again. Aggie was just the person she needed to talk to. But how to start? Tugs set the stationary down and got up to move her ribbon from her dresser pull to her bedpost like Aggie’s. There.

Dear Aggie,

My ribbon is hanging on my bed, too.

I liked it when you read my essay at the Fourth of July. Miss Lucy put my essay ribbon up at the library. But I took it down. Swimming and archery sound fun.

Do you remember on the Fourth of July when I said I had something important to tell you? It just got more important. I think Mr. Moore is not Mr. Moore at all but Dapper Jack Door, a crook from Chicago. I saw his picture in a newspaper. I think he is going to take your father’s money and everyone else’s and leave town without starting a newspaper. I don’t know what to do.

When do you come home from camp? I hope it is soon.

Your friend,

Tugs Button

Tugs read over her letter three times. Then she folded it and put it in the envelope. She licked it shut and wrote Aggie Millhouse on the front. She copied the camp address from Aggie’s envelope and went back to the kitchen.

“Well,” said Granny. “Took you long enough. What did you say? Did you spell everything right? I’d better check it over.”

“I already licked it,” said Tugs. “Do we have any stamps?”

“Here,” said Mother Button, rooting through the whatnot drawer. “Yes. Here we go. If you run down to the post office now, it may still go out with today’s mail.”