prize more thankfully than the privilege of sitting at our own windows up stairs with closed doors. I am bound to say, however, that I am far better off than any one else in the house in this respect, having a very cosy nest in the new wing. But being next the nursery, the system of open roof makes the rooms virtually one; and though the two children, Jack and Nevil, are the very clearest and best of little chicks, and their Welsh nurse and Portuguese nursery-maid are likewise excellent, it does sometimes suggest itself that silence would be preferable. So then I creep up my glen and have an hour or two, with only the blue and gold lizards as companions. Happily in Fiji we have really no noxious creatures except mosquitoes (and they do swarm). But the houses are full of cockroaches, which eat everything—boots, shoes, clothes, &c.—and what they spare the mildew destroys. My drawing-paper is already spoilt, and our dresses and boots are green with mildew every morning. So are our collections of spears, clubs, and bowls, which require daily rubbing with oil. Another foe is a lovely white cockatoo, which has a special fancy for eating the best table-cloths and the gentlemen’s dress-clothes! We have a good many parrots about the place, more or less tame, which will come and perch on the tea-cups, upsetting more than they drink; and there are tame kingfishers, which eat the cockroaches (in which useful art they are assisted by huge spiders, which we love and cherish). A pair of laughing-jackasses walk about the apology for a garden, and jeer at everything; and sometimes they and the pigeons come into the drawing-room, and have to be driven out; and all farmyard creatures, carefully reared by Abbey since our arrival, roam about on every side,—cows, sheep, turkeys, geese, and fowls; and don’t they all cackle and gobble! You see there is so very little available ground for anything here on this rocky island, that everything is huddled up into no space at all. A very pet dog, with her puppies of two generations, complete the family.