But it does not matter, Nelly, their locking us up in a state of siege. Rosy May has got a beauty sent round her bottle of strengthening mixture by the doctor's handsome young man; and Lucy Wilde found such a duck tucked in her stockings from the wash. And those impudent fellows next door have pelted us over the garden wall with half a dozen all tied on to a piece of string precisely as if it were the tail of a kite that had got entangled in the trees. And then, Nelly (mind, this is a secret), there came a new Sunday dress for me (a beautiful shot silk, with all kinds of colors, just like mother-o'-pearl); and what do you think? There, inside it, hid up the sleeve, was such a love of a valentine for your dear, happy, happy Kitty! Oh gracious! when I opened it, I saw two sweet little doves, as white as bride-cake, caged in a net of beautiful silver paper, hovering over a large heart, smothered, dear, in the sweetest roses! It was so pretty, you can't tell; and I was _so_ happy I could have gone to bed and have cried the rest of the afternoon. How kind of _him_ to think of me on such a day! Bless him! How foolishly I love him to be sure, and I should be very wicked if I didn't; for it was only yesterday I flung the paring of an apple three times round my head, and when it had fallen on the ground, there it was in the form of the dear letter "S!" You understand, dearest; but not a word. Snapp had one. It was inside an orange that was thrown at her from over the wall. Those impudent boys again! She tore it up most indignantly, and flung the bits away with a burst of eloquence about "the vulgar ribaldry of such ignorant, witless insults." We picked up the bits afterwards, and, putting them together, found they formed the ugliest picture that ever was seen, of an old witch riding on a birch-broom, with a big bottle in her hand. It was too bad, but we have pasted the pieces on a sheet of paper, and intend to keep it by us to spite her with some day, if she is unkind to us. The fact is, the whole house is crazy. If it was breaking-up day, there couldn't be more fun and less discipline. Even that long piece of dryness, Miss Twigg, has been caught laughing several times, and the servants have been giggling up and down stairs, and all over the house, and running every minute to the door, until at last Mrs. Rodwell has put the chain up, and says she'll answer the door herself. She's in such a passion that I shouldn't like to be one of those poor girls who hav'n't paid for their last half year, and to be taken up before her! Even that curious old Mr. Penn has become touched with the infection. He has been setting us the drollest copies, about "Faint Heart ne'er won Fair Lady," and "Though Lost to Sight, to Memory Dear," and such like; exceeding even his usual eccentricities.