You see everybody seems to be falling in love and getting married except me, and I shall be an old maid. I don't like anyone, and I don't like anyone to like me. I feel quite angry if anyone pays me the least attention, and yet I'm lonely inside. Oh, Miles, why did you go so far away, and turn into a great bearded stranger, when I wanted you at home to talk to every day? I hate Mexico, and the valley, and the mine, and "my chum Gerard"--"my chum Gerard" most of all, because I'm so jealous of him. What business had he to nurse you, I should like to know! But I pity him, if you were as cross as you used to be when you had a cold in the old days, and had to put your feet into mustard and water! How well I remember it! First the water was too hot, then it was too cold, and in the end there, was no water left in the bath, and the furniture was afloat. Jack is not half so _difficile_ as you used to be! He has grown such a dear old thing, just as merry and mischievous as ever, but so kind, and thoughtful, and nice all round. Father is very proud of him, and he is the old General's special pet, and half lives there when he is at home. As for Jill, she is a MINX in capital letters. So pretty and gay, and funny and charming, and naughty and nice, and aggravating and coaxing, and lazy and reckless, and altogether different from everybody else, that my poor little nose is quite out of joint, and I heard an impertinent young man speaking of me the other night as "Jill Trevor's sister"! That's what I have descended to, after all my lofty ambitions--_Jill's sister_! How furious I should have been in the old days, but now I don't seem to mind. Are you changed very much, old Miles? Inside, I mean, I'm not thinking of the horrid beard. You are such a reserved person that your letters leave one in ignorance of the real _you_. "My chum Gerard" knows you better than I do nowadays. What an awful thought! Life seems so different now from what it did at eighteen, and all one's ideals are changed. I had my usual yearly "token" from my friend of the fog this spring--just a newspaper posted from New York, as before, so that I know he is alive and well, but I long to know more, and sometimes it seems as if I never should. Sometimes--when I am in the blues--I feel as if that night was the only time in my life when I was really and truly of use. I suppose that's what makes me remember it so well, and think so much of the poor man. I can remember his face still--so distinctly! Poor, poor fellow! Father says it's more difficult than ever to make money nowadays. He may work all his life, and never be able to pay off his debts.