hat after spending my days walking through the inside of
this precious hospital I must spend my nights walking round the outside
of it. Being a woman of like passions with himself, I had a 'ter'ble
dust' with him on the subject, and the next I heard was that he was going
to make Retreat in a kind of English-church monastery somewhere in the
city, where he would 'try to disentangle' himself 'from the world' and
see what he 'ought to do next.' He sent me his blessing with this
message, and I sent him back mine--a less holy one, but he'll make it do.

"I thought you would remember Mr. Drake's mother, dear Auntie Rachel.
Yes, he is fair also, and wears his hair brushed across his forehead,
much as you see in the portraits of Napoleon. In fact, he is a sort of
fair-haired Napoleon in nature as well.

"He took me to the theatre the other evening, and that was the great
event I intended to tell you about. It was quite a proper sort of place,
and nobody behaved badly except Glory, who kept talking and preaching and
going silly with excitement all the evening through, with the result that
everybody was staring mewards and wanting to turn me out.

"Since then Mr. Drake's friend, Lord Bob, who knows all the actors on
earth seemingly, has taken us 'behind,' and we have seen a rehearsal.
Things don't look quite the same behind as before, but nothing in the
world does that, and I wasn't a bit disenchanted. In fact, I found
everything delightfully romantic and amusing, and really I do not think
it _can_ be so very wicked to be an actress. Do you?

"My friend Polly Love was with us. Polly is a probationer also, and
sleeps in the cubicle next to mine, and after the rehearsal we went to
the gentlemen's chambers to tea. I can hear what Aunt Anna is saying:
'Goodness gracious! you didn't do that, girl?' Well, yes, I did though.
In the interest of my sex I wanted to see how two boys could live in
rooms all by themselves, and it's perfectly shocking how well they get on
without a woman. Of course I wasn't such a silly as to let wit about
that, but after I had examined their sitting-room and cross-examined its
owners on its numerous photographs (chiefly feminine) and tried how it
feels to hold their big pipes between one's teeth, I whipped off my hat
at once and began to put things straight for them, and then I made the
tea.

"By this time the gentlemen had changed into their jackets, and I sent
them flying around for cups and saucers and