_February 25th._ Grace was here yesterday. She has a way of dropping in when she is most wanted and leaving a trail of sunshine behind her. She is a quiet little body, never hurried or fretted, and she has a genius for discovering, in the most unlikely places, virtues invisible to the naked eye. She sees the wrong and mean things, too—she’s not at all a goody-goody person; but she keeps the wrong and the wrong-doers so entirely distinct and separate that you wonder how you were ever so stupid as to confuse them. She’s really devoted to that cranky old half-brother of hers. She is always commiserating him because he did not have her mother, and his own died when he was born. She’ll explain and expound him till you think he really is noble, only he never had a chance to learn how to do noble things. It is certainly a pity, however, that his education is in such a backward stage. Robert Lincoln and Milly are becoming much more than friends; and Cousin Jason’s infantile ignorance of other people’s rights is anything but conductive to comfort under the circumstances. But Grace’s one idea, as usual, is that dear brother Jason must not be crossed. He takes it so hard, poor fellow, when things don’t go as he wishes. And if Mr. Lincoln is as seriously fond of Milly as he professes to be, he may as well make up his mind to be satisfied with winning her, if he can succeed in doing it, and not be too exacting with her relatives. Poor Grace! As if I don’t know the kind of young-ladyhood she believes in Milly’s having, and is simply aching to give her! But evidently Cousin Jason’s will is to be law. The truth is, as I told Grace, Cousin Jason is just like Cousin Chad—though they’d both foam at the mouth to hear me say it. But they’ve neither of them any sense of proportion. That’s why they have no sense of humor, nor power to get their own personalities in proper perspective with other people and their rights. But why, asks Grace calmly, shouldn’t we be as sorry for a person born with no sense of proportion as for a person born with only one eye? Of course the lack of a sense of humor is harder on the kin than the lack of an eye would be—Grace admitted that handsomely; but in neither case was the afflicted party to blame. And didn’t one really deserve more sympathy when his affliction necessitated his also being a bore? We fell to giggling as we discussed this knotty point; and I was so far converted to Grace’s charitable views that I had Uncle Milton get a basket of double jonquils for her to take to Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane always did admire my double jonquils, and somehow her own never succeed. I like the single ones much better myself; the others, like my revered relative, are too clumsy and fat. I told Grace to say I sent them to her on the principle of sweets to the sweet. And now I’ll be having another visitation, for my sins! * * * * *