I meant to have sent you a dozen letters between my last one and this, but we have been so busy that I simply could not write. I thought I was a particularly strong person, but I give you my word, Carin, that at the end of a day of sight-seeing I am glad to eat my dinner and slip into my bed. However, there is usually something required of me between the eating of the dinner and the seeking of my couch, for we have been entertaining much, and have been much entertained. We left London late in May and sailed to Genoa, and since then we have been seeing Italy. As it chanced, Aunt Lorena fell in with some old friends who have been living for years near Fiesole, and they decided to journey with us. This has given us the entrée to many homes which we should otherwise not have seen, and it has all been very gay and diverting. Never have I loved any place as I do Italy. Such beauty, such pathos! I cannot express all I feel, though my diary shall some day show you that I have tried. But more of that some other time, dear girl. I insist that we must be together this winter for a while. Am I right in thinking you will go home for the winter, and that you are to have the delicious experience of preparing your trousseau there in your own dear old home? I want to help with that. I have hunted out a few little things that may find a place in it, and I want to use my needle in your service. Mr. Hargreaves has been everywhere with us. I thought it odd of him to accompany us to Venice and to Rome, since he had been in both places only a few months ago. But it was his affair. There was nothing to keep him from visiting both places again if he chose. Of course he has added to my pleasure, being nearer my age than any of the others. Uncle and Aunt Lorena appear to have much satisfaction from his presence, too. They like him immensely and talk about him a great deal. They think him brilliant, but I am not sure that I do. His mind clings too long to one subject. I like a little more agility. Weren’t you always amused at the way the minds of Mary Cecily and her brother danced from subject to subject? It was touch and go with them. All they needed was half a sentence—they understood the rest before it was spoken. I think myself that no one ought to visit Venice except with her own true love. To float over those moonlit canals to the sound of music, between those regal, slumbering palaces in the company of mere casual acquaintances or elderly relatives is too much to ask of anyone.