dewy-eyed little dove of a thing she is. A few days of happy holiday
for her, and then the mildest and gayest school I can find, one
where they have no stuffy rules about not letting the pupils come
home for week-ends.

The _Profesor_ explained that the _Hospicio_ had fallen on evil days
during the revolution and the children are now cared for in private
families. The three different households which had been sheltering
Dolores had been obliged from various circumstances to give her up,
and Senor Morales regretted the limitations of his own
establishment.

Poor, pitiful little creature ... little "Sorrows and Sadness!" I must
pledge myself to make her over into Joys and Gladness--_Alegrias y
Felicidad_, if I remember my Spanish at all.

I'm ashamed of those mean moments at first when I didn't want her!

Penitently,

JANE.

P.S. I mean to have her call me Aunt Jane, which will be "_Tia
Juana_." Isn't that charming? I really don't care to be called
"Mother" just now by a twelve-year-old daughter. It's--a bit
un-bridal.

_Sunday Night._

MY DEAR SARAH,

I wasn't up to writing you yesterday--I'm not really able to, now,
but I'll try to tap you out a few feeble lines....

Oh, yes, she came. She's here! As some of my vaude-villains would
say--I'll say she is!

M.D. and I met the steamer, the _Pearl of Peru_. Gentle,
innocent-sounding name, isn't it? Sounds as if it might fitly convoy
the dewy-eyed dove of my dreams.... It took a long time to dock and
all the passengers were at the rail. I looked in vain for my
daughter-to-be, but I was particularly struck by a sad,
broken-looking, elderly man whose eager eyes raked the wharf. He
turned to ask a question of a large girl beside him, a creature clad
in strident hues, furrily powdered, bearing a caged parrot in one
hand, a shivering, hairless, Mexican dog under her arm, a cigarette
in her mouth. Her gaze became riveted upon me. She emitted a
piercing shriek of joy.

"_Madre virgen de mi alma!_"

Then, in order that all persons present on shipboard and on the wharf
might have the benefit of her remark, she translated it--"Virgin
Mother of my soul!"--and every one at once laid by all other
preoccupations and gave himself whole-heartedly to looking and
listening.

I have never seen a more rad