be cared for. It isn't that I like him
any the less, but I am getting to like orphans the more.

I just met our medical adviser a few minutes ago as he was emerging
from the nursery--Allegra is the only person in the institution who is
favored by his austere social attentions. He paused in passing to make a
polite comment upon the sudden change in the weather, and to express the
hope that I would remember him to Mrs. Pendleton when I wrote.

This is a miserable letter to send off on its travels, with scarcely
a word of the kind of news that you like to hear. But our bare little
orphan asylum up in the hills must seem awfully far away from the palms
and orange groves and lizards and tarantulas that you are enjoying.

Have a good time, and don't forget the John Grier Home

and

SALLIE.

December 11.

Dear Judy:

Your Jamaica letter is here, and I'm glad to learn that Judy, Junior,
enjoys traveling. Write me every detail about your house, and send some
photographs, so I can see you in it. What fun it must be to have a boat
of your own that chugs about those entertaining seas! Have you worn all
of your eighteen white dresses yet? And aren't you glad now that I made
you wait about buying a Panama hat till you reached Kingston?

We are running along here very much as usual without anything exciting
to chronicle. You remember little Maybelle Fuller, don't you--the chorus
girl's daughter whom our doctor doesn't like? We have placed her out.
I tried to make the woman take Hattie Heaphy instead,--the quiet little
one who stole the communion cup,--but no, indeed! Maybelle's eyelashes
won the day. After all, as poor Marie says, the chief thing is to be
pretty. All else in life depends on that.

When I got home last week, after my dash to New York, I made a brief
speech to the children. I told them that I had just been seeing Aunt
Judy off on a big ship, and I am embarrassed to have to report that the
interest--at least on the part of the boys--immediately abandoned Aunt
Judy and centered upon the ship. How many tons of coal did she burn a
day? Was she long enough to reach from the carriage house to the Indian
camp? Were there any guns aboard, and if a privateer should attack her,
could she hold her own? In case of a mutiny, could the captain shoot
down anybody he chose, and wouldn't he be hanged when he got to shore?

I had ignominiously to call upon Sandy to finish my speech. I realize
that the best-equipped femini