Kilo by Ellis Parker Butler

The next morning Eliph' Hewlitt purchased the two-pound box of candy in the pictured box that had long been considered by the druggist a foolish investment. For months it had reposed in the end of the toilet soap case awaiting a purchaser, and had acquired a sweet odor of scented soap mingled with the plainer odor of cut castile, and no one had been so extravagant as to buy it. Once the druggist had tried to persuade the candy salesman to take it back in exchange for more salable goods, but after taking it from the show-case and smelling it the drummer refused. At the opposite end of the case the druggist kept his plush manicure and brush-and-comb sets, with a few lumps of camphor scattered among them to discourage moths, but the odor of camphor did not hurt the candy. The scented soap protected it from the camphor. When Kilo buys scented soap she likes to have it really scented.

Miss Sally, when the small boy Eliph' secured as a messenger had delivered the box of candy, knew well enough what it meant. The neatly written card, "From Yours very truly, E. Hewlitt," did not suggest much, perhaps, but in Kilo friends do not scatter two-pound boxes of candy recklessly about. To receive a two-pound box on Christmas would have been a suspicious circumstance, for a smaller box would have done quite as well between friends, but to send a two-pound box on a day that was no holiday at all, but just a plain day of the week, could stand for but one of two things -- the giver was insane, or he had "intentions," and Miss Sally knew very well that Eliph' Hewlitt was not insane. Unless on the subject of Jarby's Encyclopedia.