Oh pooh! I don’t see how you can say the Prince of Naples’ engagement is a true love affair. Why, he can’t marry anyone but a Princess, and a Catholic one at that, can he? So it doesn’t leave him much choice. After all, I don’t think it matters. My views have changed somewhat after being so long in Europe. Why, there are a lot of happy marriages over here that have been cooked up by the families! Checkers wants to be remembered, but says his nose is out of joint since I have taken up with you. Thank you for the flowers, telegrams, messages--I love them all. * * * * * A. D. TO POLLY _Monte Catini, September._ Oh how eagerly I read of your safe crossing and arrival in London, dear! I am so glad you are at Easthope’s. I know every nook and corner thereabouts, so I can think of you in familiar surroundings, passing through the little hallway--isn’t it a sort of toy play-house? Have you learned the postman’s rap yet? I can hear him now coming gradually down the street from house to house, and finally knocking, bang, bang, on the front door. And then when you go out, Easthope takes down his whistle and gives a sharp toot, once for a growler, twice (two short ones) for a two-wheeler, and from the rank on the other side of Piccadilly, along the green park, there hurries a hansom and you get in. Easthope closes the flap in front and then looks inquiringly to know where he shall tell the cabby to go, or else the cabby himself opens his little trap (on a rainy day letting in a rivulet) and waits to be told--Eaton Square, Victoria Station, the stores, or the Gaiety Theatre--and off you start, the little bells at the horse’s collar ringing, down the street and into the stream of Piccadilly. I can see you dining, or breakfasting with muffins and marmalade, the table so spick and span, and Easthope so intelligent and thoughtful. But then, he is one in a million, really. I wonder if there is the same housemaid whom I used to hear before daylight beginning her work sweeping and cleaning, in the way it was done a century ago. She was so hard-working and so faithful! It is not the same boy, I am pretty sure, that helps Easthope, for he no sooner gets one trained up in the way he should go than some lodger finds him so good that he takes him away, and Easthope patiently begins to turn another lout into a footman,--a worm into a butterfly!