d you feel he can't be real. He must
have stepped stealthily out from a dim tapestry hanging on one of
the thick stone walls, and he will have to go back to his place
beside the sleeping tapestry knight, as soon as he has finished
running after the doves, who have left their dovecote and are
balancing with their coral feet on the battlements, or walking in
the courtyard. Seeing this castle of the Princess's makes me quite
envy you having Dunelin. I should like to live in a castle. _Do_
buy Dunelin, as you said you sometimes thought of doing, and invite
me to be a humble little member of one of your big house-parties.
Your deserted princess, BARRIE.

LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER

DEAREST BARBARA: Every prospect pleases and only man is
vile. At least, I don't mean vile, but upsetting. It is too bad
about Basil. I don't know what to do. I hope _you_ aren't hoping
that I may fall in love with him? Something he said makes me think
_he_ believes you want it. But why should you? You don't know him
and his sister so very well. They aren't old friends. Darling, if I
am a bother to you--and I know I am--I'll go far away and change my
name and do anything you like, except marry Basil. It isn't that
I'm too young. It seems to me if I loved a man desperately I should
like to marry him while I was young, so as to give him all my
years, and because I should grudge the days and weeks and months
lived away from him. But Basil is just like a brother. He might
hold my hand all day, and I shouldn't have a single thrill, which
he says is the way for a girl to find out whether she's really in
love.

Everything might be so pleasant, if it weren't for this silliness.
We have seen Elgin, which has the most exquisite ruined Cathedral
that ever lived or died; and sweet Pluscarden Abbey not far off;
and Forres, full of memories of Macbeth; and a mysterious carved
shaft of sandstone called Sweno's Stone; and the hidden, secret
glen of the Findhorn River, where we had to get out, and walk for
miles through a gorge of the most entrancing beauty. Sometimes it
was wild and grand, sometimes peaceful as a dream of fairyland.
Every kind of lovely tree grew there, out of sheer, rocky walls red
as coral, or pale and glistening as gray satin; and you looked far
down on wat