"Anyhow, I want you to be assured that I accept my fate with placidity, and am still pursuing my daily rounds of duty combined with some small bits of pleasure. I am getting quite a good rider. Now I know and share Miss Horatia's feelings about cars. They're good to get to places, but for enjoying the country they're not in it with a horse. She has taken me for several long rides through lanes and woods where cars cannot go, and if ever I become a rich woman, I will buy a horse and keep it till I die. "I suppose Jim Paget would give me a horse if I married him. He has written to-day to say he wants to see me, but I've put him off. I can't see him here. It would be awkward, and Miss Anne told me to-day that she's expecting a nephew of theirs from abroad to come and stay with them. He is arriving to-morrow. Do you know him? His name is Vernon Buchan. He is a great violinist and gives recitals in London. I am anxious and excited to meet him. I do love anyone who loves music, don t you? Miss Horatia rather sniffs when his name is mentioned. I don't think she approves of him. She said straight out yesterday when Miss Anne said how long it was since they had seen him: "'He is in want of something, my dear Anne, or he would not ask us to have him.' "Miss Anne shook her head and looked at me. I pretended, of course, to be engrossed in Miss Anne's knitting. "This evening Miss Anne asked me if I would like a few days' holiday. I don't think she wants me to meet her nephew. Why? I have seen too many men and musicians abroad to be unduly impressed by them. But of course I said I could go to Mrs. Wharnecliffe. I think she will have me. I did not know about it this afternoon when I was over there. And I can't go to her to-morrow, so I shall have a glimpse of the nephew before I disappear. "Oh, Cousin Thor, I am scribbling away like this to take my thoughts off my unfortunate existence. Does anyone in the whole wide world really want me, I wonder? I don't mean foolish creatures like Jim and your Godwin who like the outside of me, and have no more ideas of my real self than a cat has of a polar bear. Miss Anne, you see, can dispense with my services very easily when she likes. "How is that darling little fishing village? I should like to own a boat and turn myself into a fisher girl and sail away into the sunset sky every evening, drawing my fishing net through the rippling water, and watch the stars come out one by one and twinkle in a thousand lights on the moonlit waves! I would be quite happy in one of those queer little whitewashed houses with my chimney touching my neighbour's doorstep above. "Good-bye, Guardian, Mentor, and Granite Tor. "Your lonely, bewildered, but not utterly beaten— "BUBBLE." The Miss Buchans were at tea in the big drawing-room when their nephew arrived.