"DEAR AUNT HARRIET:--I know you keep promises and so I address you as 'aunt.' I'm sure you remember one day when I came to you in tears. I didn't often come that way, did I? I was so lonely, I'll never forget how lonely, just because it suddenly occurred to me that most little girls had mothers and aunts, and I had never seen one that belonged to me. You took me in your arms and said you would be my aunt, that you had been thinking how nice it would be to have a little girl for a niece, and I went home comforted and actually believing you had wanted me for a niece all the time. "Well, I've got a real aunt now, Aunt Mogridge, and sometimes I think neither of us is real glad it is so. I'm a wicked girl for writing that, and would scratch it out only I somehow want you to know how I feel. She is just as kind as any aunt could be, but, well, she doesn't care for the things I do, and--vice versa, as the books say. Now, while I'm sighing for a glimpse of the Old Dominion, and papa, and you and--and all of them, Aunt Mogridge is sighing because she can't have a new dress for Lady D----'s to-morrow night, and worrying lest I say something I ought not to, because there is to be a real live duke there. I have met dukes before, and found them very uninteresting, although I suppose there are various kinds. "What wouldn't I give, this dismal afternoon, to jump on the back of Moleskin and ride like the wind and hear solemn old Jeremiah clattering behind, his black face turned white with fear lest I fall off! Instead I've been listening to old Lady Brendon retail the latest gossip. She's a wheezy old lady, so fat her chairmen's faces always shine with perspiration, and all she cares about is the latest gossip: 'Lord So-and-So has wagered his last farthing at White's or the Chocolate House,' until I want to say, like black Susan, 'Jolly fuss!' You should have heard Aunt Mogridge tell Lady Brendon about what a rich man papa is. I used to think, to hear him talk, that if the crops failed he'd never be able to pay his debts. "I saw the king at the theatre the other night. He looks just like some of the German farmers papa and I saw in Pennsylvania. They say he is very pious, and frowns on gambling, as well he might for the good of his kingdom, and that he is determined to do as his mother told him and be a real king. He doesn't look as though he'd exactly know how. You should have heard him laugh over a little silly joke, when one of the actors sat in a chair on a make-believe baby and a ventriloquist squalled just like a baby. But they says he's obstinate and the colonies can't make him yield to their demands. "People here think just as dear papa does, that England has helped fight the battles of the colonies and protect them with the strong arm of England--I tell 'em there are strong arms in the colonies--and that they should help pay the taxes.