For Grumpy has been at this sanitarium for three years and seven weeks. But the Peon has been here, too, and David—and Cousin Jane! Caro I have not seen in all these years: Cousin Jane doesn’t consider it decent for a young girl to be allowed in a place where women may be seen in the halls in kimonos, and men are allowed to sit in wheeled-chairs on the balconies, shamelessly clad in their bath robes, with heaven knows what garments, or lack of garments, underneath. Caro should not set foot in the place; and no entreaties could move her. But Caro has written, every week of the world; and, to make up for my not having her, Cousin Jane paid me a visit herself. She felt it her duty, she said, to find out what kind of a place it was that John Bird had shut Lyddy up in; and if the rest of the family wouldn’t look after me, she would. So she came, suspicious and inquisitorial, and melted visibly under the tactful suavity of the physician in charge,—“the Head,” as we called him. She even began to help him, ministering to the patients after a fashion all her own. She had it out with one of them, a metaphysical lady, a very unorthodox person, and left her in a state of collapse. In no uncertain tones she expressed her views on hen-pecking to another, an elderly lady with a liver and a youthful husband. I don’t know what would have happened further if I had not been inspired to beguile her into going down into the treatment rooms for a Turkish bath. She came up purple with wrath, and began to pack her trunk, declaring that she washed her hands of the place forever; and if I wanted to stay there and have my morals corrupted, I could; but for her part she was going back to her own bathtub, and the religion she was brought up in. And go she did, that night. For myself, these three years must remain in the silence in which they have been spent. The pain I wish to forget; today’s pain is enough. And the helplessness and idleness, so much worse than the pain—that too, I would shut from my memory. But the kindness which has filled these years—that is an eternal possession. And the loveliness of this little valley is mine always, cut off as it is in my thoughts as a place apart from all my real world and life, shut in and hidden by its beautiful circling hills. I have called it the Enchanted Valley, because it seemed sometimes as if some spell had caught and bound me to it forever. But now that I am to go free at last I can forget all that, and remember only the enchantment of its beauty, and the kindness of those who dwell in it. The Land of Make-Believe, too, is as near me as under the trees at home. I have had beautiful times in Make-Believe, day and night, and especially at night. I have seen Caro there, you may be sure! I made a jingle about it not long ago which tells the real story of these long years better than anything else I could write. _IN MAKE-BELIEVE_