okes me. Scales are detestable. Miss Masterman puts
pennies on the backs of my hands, but I cannot help jerking my
arm when I turn my thumb under, so they always fall on to the
floor, and then she is cross.

"I like drawing the best of all my lessons. I have bought a new
paint-box with the money you sent me, and I will try and make
pictures for you of everything I see. There are no orange-trees
or coffee-plantations here. We go walks down long streets with
tall houses on both sides, or sometimes into the Park, which I
like better, though it is not so nice as the garden at San
Carlos, for you may not pick the flowers, and there are sparrows
instead of humming-birds. I hope Juanita does not forget to feed
the terrapin and the green lizard. Give my love to her, and to
Tasso and Pedro and everybody. Aunt Agatha is writing to you
herself, and she will put this letter inside hers.

"From your loving little daughter,
"PHILIPPA SEATON."

If I found my life in London rather hard to bear at times, I am afraid
my attempts to relieve the monotony of my existence were not always a
success at head-quarters. I had a lively imagination, and my inventive
faculty was continually leading me into planning games which my cousins
thought only too delightful, but which were set down as either mess or
mischief by those in authority. When Aunt Agatha found us tobogganing
down the back staircase in a clothes-basket, she knew at once the
instigator of the sport, and she easily guessed who had taken the chairs
from the best bedroom to form a menagerie in the nursery. It was I who
conceived the brilliant idea of making a sea-side resort for the dolls
with the aid of the tea-tray full of water and the sand out of the
canary's cage, a most interesting and fascinating pastime for us, but
looked at in a very different light by Blair, when she returned to find
the younger children with sopping pinafores, and my miniature ocean
slowly wending its way in trickles over the nursery floor.

"You get into mischief the moment my back is turned. I'm sure the
children never thought of doing such things before you came!" she said
severely.

[Illustration: MAKING A SEA-SIDE RESORT FOR THE DOLLS]

I do not suppose they had, for though they loved a romp, they were not
naturally imaginative; but they immensely enjoyed my ideas, and were
always ready to fall in with my schemes, from soa