I have lived out of doors since. When it is cold, I am wrapped in a wadded robe Kate has made for me,--a capital thing, loose, and warm, and silky-soft. To an invalid with nerves all on edge, that is much. I never found out, until Kate enveloped me in its luxurious folds, what it was that rasped my feelings so, every morning, when I was dressed; I then knew it must have been my flashy woollen dressing-gown. I envy women their soft raiment, and I rather dread the day when I shall be compelled to wear coats again. (Let me cheat myself, if I can.) III. May, 1855. You wish to know more of Ben. I am glad of it. You shall be immediately gratified. He is a true Scot, tall and strong and sandy-haired, with quick gray eyes, and a grave countenance, which relaxes only upon very great provocation. Before I came here, he was known simply as a most careful, industrious, silent, saving machine, which cared not a jot for anybody in particular, but never wanted any spur to its own mechanical duty. It was never known to do a turn of work not legitimately its own, though mathematically exact in its proper office. But after I came here with my sister, a helpless cripple, we found out that the mathematical machine was a man, with a soft, beating heart. He was called upon to lift me from the carriage, and he did it as tenderly as a woman. He took me up as a mother lifts her child from the cradle, and I reposed passively in his strong arms, with a feeling of perfect security and ease. From that day to this, Ben has been a most devoted friend to me. He watches for opportunities to do me kindnesses, and takes from his own sacred time to make me comforts. He has had me in his arms a hundred times, and carries me from bed to couch like a baby. I positively blush in writing this to you. You have known me to be a man for years, and here I am in arms again! Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't like to recall his sufferings. The first I knew of it was by his starting and changing color one day, when I was reading the news from China to Kate in the garden, he being engaged in tying up a rose-bush close by. Kate saw his confusion, and smiled. Ben, catching the expression of her face, looked inconceivably sheepish. He dropped his ball of twine, and was about to go away, but thinking better of it, he suddenly turned and said, with a grin and a blush,-- "Ye'll be telling on me, Miss Kathleen! so I'se be aforehond wi' ye, and let Mr. Charlie knaw the warst frae my ain confassion, if he will na grudge me a quarter hour." I signified my wish to hear, and with much difficulty and many questions wrung from him his "confassion." Kate afterwards gave me her version, and the facts were these:-- He persuaded Kate to let him buy a pair of Shanghais.