write in the upper floor of my new house, of which I will send you some
day a plan to measure. 'Tis an elegant structure, surely, and the proid
of me oi. Was asked to pay for it just now, and genteelly refused, and
then agreed, in view of general good-will, to pay a half of what is
still due.

_24th January 1893._--This ought to have gone last mail and was
forgotten. My best excuse is that I was engaged in starting an
influenza, to which class of exploit our household has been since then
entirely dedicated. We had eight cases, one of them very bad, and
one--mine--complicated with my old friend Bluidy Jack.[57] Luckily
neither Fanny, Lloyd, or Belle took the confounded thing, and they were
able to run the household and nurse the sick to admiration.

Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps the prettiest
performance was that of our excellent Henry Simele, or, as we sometimes
call him, Davy Balfour. Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest
Samoan recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating at cards;
now the last nights of our bad time, when we had seven down together, it
was enough to have made anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the
rounds with a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each of
the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with them.

I must tell you that in my sickness I had a huge alleviation and began a
new story. This I am writing by dictation, and really think it is an art
I can manage to acquire. The relief is beyond description; it is just
like a school-treat to me, and the amanuensis bears up extraordinar'.
The story is to be called _St. Ives_; I give you your choice whether or
not it should bear the sub-title, "Experiences of a French prisoner in
England." We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this cursed
mail arrived and requires to be attended to. It looks to me very like as
if _St. Ives_ would be ready before any of the others, but you know me
and how impossible it is I should predict. The Amanuensis has her head
quite turned and believes herself to be the author of this novel (and is
to some extent)--and as the creature (!) has not been wholly useless in
the matter (I told you so! A.M.) I propose to foster her vanity by a
little commemoration gift! The name of the hero is Anne de St. Yves--he
Englishes his name to St. Ives during his escape. It is my idea to get a
ring made which shall either represent _Anne_ or A. S. Y. A., of course,