I could just tell you a lovely story about Dicky’s getting lost in the woods the day before yesterday, and our terrible fright about him, and how we all joined in the boy-hunt, until Geoff and Bell found him at the Lone Stump; but I suppose the chronicle belongs to Phil’s province, so I desist. But what can I say? Suppose I tell you that Uncle Doc and the boys have been shooting innocent, _tame_ sheep, skinning and cutting them up on the way home, and making us believe for two days that we were eating venison; and we never should have discovered the imposition had not Dicky dragged home four sheep-skins from the upper pool, and told us that he saw the boys ‘_peeling them off a venison_.’ Perhaps Phil may call this information, and Margery will vow that it is gossip and belongs to her; any way, they consider it a splendid joke, and chuckle themselves to sleep over it every night; but I think the whole affair is perfectly maddening, and it makes me boil with rage to be taken in so easily. Such a to-do as they make over the matter you never saw; you would think it was the first successful joke since the Deluge. (That wasn’t a _dry_ joke, was it? Ha, ha!) This is the way they twang on their harp of a thousand strings. At breakfast, this morning, when Jack passed me the corn-bread, I said innocently, ‘Why, what have we here?’ ‘It is manna that fell in the night,’ answered Jack, with an exasperating snicker. ‘You didn’t know mutton, but I thought, being a Sunday-school teacher, you would know something about manna.’ (_N.B._—He alludes to that time I took the infant class for Miss Jones, and they all ran out to see a military funeral procession.) ‘I wish you knew something about manners,’ snapped I; and then Aunt Truth had to warn us both, as usual. Oh dear! it’s a weary world. I’d just like to get Jack at a disadvantage once! We climbed Pico Negro yesterday. Bell, Geoff, Phil, and I had quite an experience in losing the trail. I will tell you about it. Just as— (Goodness me! what have I written? Oh, Elsie, pray excuse those _horizontal evidences_ of my forgetfulness and disobedience. I have bumped my head against the table three times, as penance, and will now try to turn my thoughts into right channels. This letter is a black-and-white evidence that _I_ have not a frivolous order of mind, and have always been misunderstood from my birth up to this date.) We have had beautiful weather since—but no, of course Phil will tell you about the weather, for that is scarcely an amusing topic. I do want to be as prudent as possible, for Uncle Doc is going to read all the letters (not, of course, aloud) and see whether we have fulfilled our specific obligations. (I just asked Bell whether ‘specific’ had a ‘c’ or an ‘s’ in the middle, and she answered ‘“c,” of course,’ with such an air, you should have heard her! I had to remind her of the time she spelled ‘Tophet’ with an ‘f’ in the middle; then she subsided.)