d beasts and barn-door
poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and
blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, she has been (and
still is) really unwell. I had a mean hope you might perhaps write again
before I got up steam: I could not have been more ashamed of myself than
I am, and I should have had another laugh.

They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake off that
reproach. On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves for California
to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the
doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than
here--a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good
except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar
persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. It is a form of
Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees
below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. The
greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to
the soul; I have near forgot the aspect of the sun--I doubt if this be
news; it is certainly no news to us. My mother suffers a little from the
inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined.
Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and I
beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the part of passenger.
They may come off!--Again this is not news. The lad? Well, the lad wrote
a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it
in hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work
entitled "_A Game of Bluff_, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis
Stevenson."

Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. There remains, I believe, to be
considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner,
and bully of the establishment. Well, I do not think him much better; he
is making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere
long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at
this particular moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an
angel of joy.

And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not? It all depends upon the point
of view, and I call it news. The devil of it is that I can think of
nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly
you were here to cheer us all up. But we'll see about that on board the
yacht.--Your affectionate friend,