However, I shall be able to take Jane's hint, and cultivate Avice, for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most kindly insisted on her going over to-day. The carriage is taking some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back. So I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured of Metelill, they begged for her likewise. Avice looks very well in the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning, the identity will only be natural. She is very much pleased and very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps 'really hear the hero talk.' And Uncle Horace says, "True, you Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once." "Oh!" said saucy Pica, "now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own conversations with father!" By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible, except Charley's smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it. Edith does not seem to mind what her daughters do. Margaret has no occasion to be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening excursions. Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only put fancies in her head. So they have only prohibited learning to smoke, staying out later than nine o'clock, and shrieking louder than a steam whistle!