Please, Richard, learn one lesson that no man ever learnt yet -learn that a woman does not of necessity enjoy all that she endures with patience or welcome every ill she tolerates. The hammering and the hugger-mugger, the upset and upside down condition of everything that I have striven to suffer, if not gladly, heroically, Harry evidently believes to be welcome as the flowers of May to his sister. 'Elizabeth likes a disturbance-all women do,' he says with a touch of irritation as he seeks, poor dear, among the chaos for his hat (upon which the furniture-removing people yesterday had thoughtfully placed the refrigerator). But was not this conclusion of Harry's a tribute to his sister's powers of self

control?

I hope our joint ménage may prosper.

Between you and me and the doorpost, I think we were mistaken as to the fragmentary condition of Harry's heart. He looks extremely well, and this Intelligence Department appointment is just what he likes. I am thankful that Ada Llanelly did not marry him. She is such a worldly little thing, and he is so perfectly simple-minded, really, that the marriage must have come to grief. Between the worldly and the unworldly there is, I have come to think, an uncrossably great gulf fixed.

By the way, if you are writing to Charles do give him a hint of the desirability of sending Minnie to see us speedily. I do not wish to worry Minnie, she and I have never particularly cottoned; but, as you have good reason to know, our stepmother holds to her lbs. of domestic and social flesh, and she begins to be a little prickly on the subject of the delayed visit. She has shown herself on the defensive indeed ever since Minnie indirectly refused to provide her relations-in-law with 'orders to view' unfurnished houses in the Lower Berkeley Street region, and despatched sheaf after sheaf from Sloane Street and Cadogan Place agents. (There Minnie was right. The Park is an excellent buffer between kinsfolk, and we are best where we are.) But, alas, for all of us, if we begin our London existence with a clearly defined 'unpleasantness,' and Charles having in the past always rather failed failed, even more than the rest of us- -to give satisfaction, much do I fear that the apprehended 'unpleasantness' will soon be an accepted fact. Our stepmother is making ready to feel slighted and has already taken the huffed tone. (Are we armoured with pride or humility, you and I, to whom it never occurs that any one should wish to slight us?) What with his

work and with this notion of getting into Parliament (Minnie, I gather, is very keen for the carrying into effect of the Parliament scheme), Charles, likely enough, is too busy to come himself immediately, but he would do well and kindly to send his wife. • Charles owes it to the memory of his father to call at once, whatever may be his engagements, and the walk across the Park from Lower Berkeley Street to Hans Place is nothing for an active man in the prime of life,' is what I hear, my good Richard, very, very often, and, as you may remember, Laura's appetite for a grievance has always grown with the talking.

Do you know, I feel sure that your sister is on the high road to becoming a shocking gossip—a mauvaise langue of the worst description. I find that there are predicaments in which the good-natured thing is to be ill-natured, the charitable thing to be malicious.

You see our poor stepmother is held in such durance vile by rheumatism as to be at present unable to drive or walk, and she therefore requires a good deal of within-doors amusement. And, though this evident law of nature is sometimes forgotten, people can only be amused by what amuses them. “Who did you see ?' and “What did they say ?' is asked of me after every outing. When I have seen next to nobody, and next to nobody has said next to nothing, rather than disappoint her news-hunger I am almost induced to draw upon my imagination, or to take away one woman's character for the sake of diverting another.

Now that I come to think of it, sharp-tongued, fault-seeing women are, surely, oftener than not the stay and support of invalid mothers or stepmothers. Poor wretches, I have no doubt their power of apparently malevolent criticism or ruthless backbiting is the outcome of good hearts and filial piety. Invalids, for their health's good, must be entertained and diverted, and old ladies are not to be interested by political crises. I doubt if the being in attendance upon an old man would foster evil-speaking; lying and slandering. The old man probably would prefer the dullest newspaper leader or most unfathomable stock-market quotations to the turning inside out for his benefit of his neighbours' characters and conditions.

I should like news of Tolcarne, and I should like to know what you think of everybody and of how things generally prosper. Is Margaret ordering the house as wisely as if the child were her own grandmother ? and is she mothering the garden ? The

almonds and the mezereon must be now ablow, and soon there should be white violets everywhere. You will, I fancy, come to like the Vicar and Mrs. Follett, and you will, I know, terrify poor Mr. Weekes, the very meekest of meek curates. Let me hear, too, if the dear old dogs, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart,' are taking kindly to the change of masters. I hope so. Mr. Weekes said to me once in his painful conversation-manufactory efforts, 'I like your dogs, Miss Etchingham; they don't bite curates.' Our Tracy walks abroad in Cynthia's company-Tracy wearing a coat cut with a Medici collar.

(Tell Margaret that Blake, when reproached for the inordinate length of time spent in the running up of a coat for his spaniel dogship, brought forward the plea, 'I'm making Tracy's coat, Miss Cynthia, with a Medici collar.')

Poor Tracy, he looks pathetically bewildered by the uproar of the traffic and the perplexing avenues of bricks and mortar. Cynthia must write and ask Mr. Follett whether spaniel history is repeating itself and if Herrick brought his 'Spaniell Tracie' to his beloved Westminster' from dull Devonshire.' If so, the poet's Tracy had little to trace, poor fellow, but his master; though London precincts were not as birdless then as now. As to Margaret's friend Trelawney, we are congratulating ourselves that his cedar-wood hued fur is a good wearing' colour and comes through a fog less discreditably than could the white coats of his still-in-the-country Persian relatives. Looking just now at his green eyes that shine like emeralds, it occurred to me that, besides flame, there is yet another thing, eyes, that London smoke cannot tarnish.

C

Later. My letter-writing this afternoon was interrupted by the welcome arrival of Charles and Minnie. Minnie was pleasanter before she wrote her novel. (You really must read 'Only a Woman's Heart'-or, at least, try to read it. It is expected of you,' to quote an habitual phrase of our stepmother's.) Minnie is thoroughly literary now, and is surrounding herself, apparently, with the ragtag and bobtail of poets and story-tellers. I had no opportunity of a tête-à-tête speech with Charles. Various people appeared, and had to be dealt with; Sir Augustus Pampesford, among others, very solemn on the wrongs of our honourable order,' and confiding his woes to Admiral Tidenham, who, notwithstanding his ear-trumpet, believed himself called upon to sympathise with the plague of barrel-organs, not the provocation

a

of baronets. Then old Mrs. Carstairs came and discoursed upon the iniquities of the young girl of the present day, quoting as text to her sermon one of Mrs. Baxter's daughters, who always dines in her own room because her parents bore her, and Lady Clementine Mure's child, who insists that her mother should winter at Pau, so that she herself may follow her studio avocations without the hindrance of Lady Clementine's requirements. Stephen Leagrave, too, walked in. He and Minnie seem to fuse now as they never did before she wrote her novel, and to have much to say to each other of authors of whom I, in my ignorance, have never heard. Stephen's work at the Education Office does not wear him to a thread-paper, seemingly, and he has taken, in a moderate degree, to journalism. Cynthia's pleasure in her brother's company is pleasant to witness; and he is proud, as he should be, of his sister. She really is a very pretty creature. She is also a singularly relationless creature, lacking as she does-with the exception of our stepmother-all female kith and kin. I hope she will be happy with us until Colonel Leagrave comes home and takes possession of his very attractive property : unless, which does not seem unlikely, some one else has succeeded in doing so meanwhile.

The door closed upon Charles and Minnie, Harry, who had maintained an ominous silence during Charles's visit, and during Charles's references to a possible Parliamentary career, kicked, to Trelawney's intense disgust, the fireguard on to the hearth-rug, and in quite ferocious tones begged me to inform him how a man with any pretension to the character of a rational being could be a Gladstonian, a Home-Ruler, an out-and-out Radical. * Charles I believe to be an honest man. I wish to believe Charles to be an honest man. But just tell me-how can an honest man go in for plunder, for downright swindling, for betraying his country, for pandering to the worst instincts of the dregs of humanity? How do you reconcile the two, Elizabeth ? Are they reconcilable? I hold the Radicals responsible for everything that has gone wrong during the last — (I forget Harry's figures). I tried to disown responsibility for opinions that I do not share; but Harry's wrath was really kindled, and he continued to heckle me till the dressing-bell rang my release.

Why are the electric light folk, of all workmen, the most troublesome and dilatory? Is it because with electric-lighters

evolution has not yet had time to play its part, and so not only the fittest electric-lighters survive?

Your affectionate sister,
ELIZABETH ETCHINGHAM.

P.S.-Write soon and tell me of things interesting, and of a book or two not beyond my comprehension. A correspondence with you was always a solace in your Indian days; and I feel now, as then, that your learning and wisdom are sufficient for the two of us, and I need not strain myself by pretending to either.

At present (11 P.M., Saturday night) I am not wholly reconciled to London, though, all things considered (how much lack of consideration this convenient phrase can cover!), I think the coming here was the best move possible. It was a choice of evils-as everything in life is-I, to-night, am inclined to think, tired to the quick as I am by my efforts to cope with this 'settling in' process. But, take notice, when I am old-really quite old (Cynthia considers I have passed the allotted span of life already, and sees little to choose between my years and those of Methuselah), I shall drag myself back to Tolcarne, to 'the dull confines of the drooping west.' Old age does not strike me as pretty in cities. You must lend me a hovel somewhere, and I will be no trouble, nor expect any vegetables. Remember, remember the vegetable grievance, and, please, let old Enticknap, for peace's preservation, despatch a hamper sometimes, if only filled with his beloved cabbages. I will keep bees, and sow annuals—the annuals that used to grow in 'the children's garden' when we were children. And I will sit and sun myself on a seat, wind-sheltered, and cut in a wall betrained with apricots.

It will be very comfortable.

Good night, good brother.

P.P.S.-Do not forget he vegetables. Do not forget 'Only a Woman's Heart'

II.

From Sir Richard Etchingham to Miss Elizabeth Etchingham.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,-I congratulate you on having effected the concentration of your miscellaneous forces in town without having any casualty to report. As to good order, perhaps I had better say nothing. Your description of the scene on the plat