so Bessie received a letter from Flossie,
who was at her grandmother's home near Portrush, in Ireland, and who
wrote as follows:

"DEAR BESSIE: I ought to have written you long ago, and thanked you
for your kind invitation to go with you to your American home. I
should have liked it of all things in the world, for to see America
and know what it is like, has been the dream of my life. You knew it
is the paradise of my countrymen, the land into which Pat and
Bridget entered when Johnny Bull came out. For various reasons,
however, I must decline your invitation, and I am going to tell you
all about it, but the beginning and the end lie so far apart that I
must go way back to the time when, owing to some mistake, Jack
Trevellian thought you died in Rome, and, because he thought so, he
made a hermit of himself and wandered off into the Tyrol and the
Bavarian Alps, where nobody spoke English, and where all he knew of
the civilized world was what he gleaned from German papers. Nobody
could communicate with him, for when he wrote to his steward, as he
did sometimes, he never said where a letter could reach him, or
where he was going next.

"At last, however, he concluded to go home, and got as far as Paris,
where grandma and I happened to be staying. This was last August,
and I was in the Rue de Rivoli one day, near Place Vendome, when,
who should turn from a side street a few rods in advance of me but
Jack himself, looking very rough and queer, with a long beard and a
shocking hat. He did not see me, and was walking so fast that I had
to run to overtake him, and even then I might not have captured him
if I had not taken the handle of my umbrella and hooked it into his
coat collar behind. This brought him to a stand-still and nearly
threw him down. You ought to have seen the expression of his face,
when he turned to see who was garroting him in broad daylight, for
he thought it was that.

"'Flossie!' he exclaimed; 'what are you about, and what is this you
have hitched to me?'

"You see the umbrella was still hooked to his coat collar and
flopping itself open.

"'If you will stand still I will show you what it is,' I said,
laughing till I cried at the comical appearance he presented, with
the passers-by looking on wonderingly.

"I do not think he liked it very well. No one likes