oreheads. The house where Queen Victoria stopped as a little girl is a
great show place, of course, and is like a toy flung down against a
cushiony hillside, a battlemented doll's house, forgotten by the child
who let it fall, while big trees grew up and tried to hide it.

Two cliffs has Sidmouth, and an innocent esplanade, and--that is about
all, except the toy town itself. But it's a place to stay in. A happy
man would never tire of it, I think. An unhappy one might prefer
Brighton--or Monte Carlo. I am neither one nor the other. So I prefer a
motor-car. We are on the wing again to-morrow.

I must now go to our sitting-room, which looks over the sea, and play a
rubber of bridge with Mrs. Senter, Emily, and Burden. Ellaline doesn't
play.

Hope I haven't bored you with my Burden, and other complaints.

Yours ever,

Pen.

_Later, August 2nd, Night_

I have opened my letter again, to tell you what came of that rubber of
bridge.

I've lost--all the glamour. The reaction after the hasheesh has set in.

We didn't play long. Just that one rubber, and before we finished
Ellaline had taken her copy of "Lorna Doone" upstairs to her own room,
without interrupting our game for a good-night. She didn't think we saw
her go; but there were two of us who did. Burden was one of the two. I
don't need to tell you who the other fool was.

Mrs. Senter and I were partners, as we generally are, if there's any
bridge going in the evening. She's devoted to the game, and it's always
she who proposes it. I would generally prefer to fag up our route for
next day with guide-books and road-maps. But hosts, like beggars, can't
be "choosers."

Well, to-night Emily and Burden had all the cards, and Burden wanted a
second rubber, but his aunt doesn't like losing her money to her nephew,
even though we play for childishly low stakes. She said she "knew that
Mrs. Norton was tired," and Emily didn't deny the soft impeachment, as
she plays bridge in the same way she would do district visiting during
an epidemic of measles--because it is her duty.

Dick had the latest French imitation of Sherlock Holmes to read, and a
box of Egyptian cigarettes to smoke (mine), which he evidently thinks
too young for me. Emily had some embroidery, which I seem to remember
that she began when I was a boy, and kept religiously to do in hotels.
(But what is there that my good sister does, which she does not do
religiously?) Mrs. Senter had nothing to amuse or