It’s an ebullient sailor who pens today’s letter. He’s in joyful posession of 23 letters, three Reader’s Digests, and a box of airmail stationery which arrived today, after a two-week mail draught. “…I surely did get a fine bouquet of good letters. One of yours was off-key and slightly discordant, for a very good reason, but you bounded right back to your normal, cheerful, good-natured self the next night. Dot, I was very sorry to hear about Eleanor’s misadventure. You have an idea now how the boys here feel when someone here gets one of those ‘Darling, I got married last night’ letters. It’s a rugged thing to take. Bitter medicine, but perhaps for the best.”

He suggests that they should have that letter of hers in their hands when they sit down to talk about its contents. There’s much food for thought and it might help keep them grounded as they discuss the ideas she puts forth therein.

Then he confesses to her that something indeed changed to allow him to feel comfortable asking her to marry him. He had been fearful, perhaps superstitious, about coming home maimed, incapacitated, or dead. “But after one of my escapades on the Haggard, in which I thought for a moment that my fears were coming true, I suddenly felt a great relief from a burden. If they didn’t get me then, perhaps I’m safe. My Faith whispers to me that I’ve done the right thing in asking you that all-important question.”

He shares her skepticism of long engagements with indefinite ends. Furthermore, he believes that people who are married should live together, and not half a world apart. Wartime marriages unsettle him. He knows guys on the ship who have two-year old children they’ve never even seen!

As she knows, he hasn’t wanted to get married until he finishes his education, but even in letters as far back as 1943, he expressed some flexibility on that. Now, he thinks it’s best they get married as soon as possible after the war is over. “I think that our marriage would help us to complete our education and to get us started so we could begin our home. …We have a high goal and a tough one to achieve. We can do it, Darling. I know we can. It’ll take a scrap of the longest, toughest kind, but we can do it.”

So he confirms that she guessed correctly. It looks entirely possible for them to announce their engagement in September, before she goes away to college.

“That pile of letters I got today has made be hilariously happy. Aside from the thought provoking letter of yours, all were in  high good humor. To think that with a million other dopes and nine million other guys besides, you chose me! It’s an honor; a real, true honor to be in love with you. It ranks with all the coveted honors and highly desired rewards of history and fiction. Dot, it’s beautiful!”

And now he must confess that the photograph she sent him recently is one of the best likenesses of her he has ever seen. “It catches the wholesomeness of your personality very well.” He’s placed it in a position of honor, inside his well-worn leatherette double frame with another favorite image of Dot.

“Dot, I love that picture, and you, and the whole cockeyed world.”

He informs her that the latest letter from her was dated July 7 and it arrived on the 11th. Can it be that the Haggard is getting close to home?

Dot writes that she is happy to have finally seen Cynthia, except for one gruesome detail. “She decided to give herself a crew hair cut like Bob’s (her intended) and the result is anything but beautiful. Fortunately, she thought better of the idea after only one snip of the scissors, so only the front looks like the hairbrush I threw out last week. Now, that’s what I call real devotion. Will you believe me, Dear, when I say that I love you, even if I don’t get a hair cut like yours?”

“I knew they couldn’t do it. What? Live entirely without love. Oh yes, I’m talking about the movie we saw tonight. They got married without love but managed to pick it up somewhere along the line. …It all turned out for the best, though, and was a comedy in the bargain.”

All that’s left to say is that she loves him beyond comprehension and misses him as much. She begs him to come home soon.