I have a new chum, a dog. Shad says he’s just as much of a stray as Joe was, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve called him Mac. He fights like sixty with Shad, but you just ought to see him father that puppy of Doris’s you brought up from New York. He trots him off to the woods with him, and teaches him all sorts of dog tricks. Doris had him cuddled and muffled up until he was a perfect little molly-coddle. I do think she would take the natural independence out of a kangaroo just by petting it. I miss you in the evenings a whole lot. Helen goes around in a sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to her, and Dorrie is all fussed up over her setting hens and the incubator natural born orphans, so I am left to my own devices. Did you ever wish we had some boys in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I could chum with. Billie comes the nearest to being a kid brother that I’ve ever had. That boy really had a dandy sense of fairness, Jean, do you know it? I hope being away at school hasn’t spoilt him. And that makes me think. The Judge and Cousin Roxy were down to dinner Sunday, and the flower of romance still blooms for them. It’s just splendid to see the way he eyes her, not adoringly, but with so much appreciation, Jean, and he chuckles every time she springs one of her delicious sayings. I don’t see how he ever let her travel her own path so many years. Well, my dear, artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is almost ten P. M., and Shad has wound the clock, and locked the doors, and put wood on the fire, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Cousin Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters. Fare ye well, great heart. We’re taking up Hamlet too, in English. Wasn’t Ophelia a quitter? Yours, Kit. If it had not been too late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Greenacres and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read them all to Carlota, sitting on their favorite old Roman seat out in the big central greenhouse. Here were only ferns and plants like orchids, begonias, and delicate cyclamen. There was a little fountain in the center, and several frogs and gold fish down among the lily pads. “Ah, but you are lucky,” Carlota cried in her quick way. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could go back with you, even for just a few days, and know them all. Kit must be so funny and clever.”