MY DEAR DOROTHY.--You do not often favour me with your correspondence, so that I was particularly pleased and flattered by the receipt of your letter asking for my opinion, as a rising barrister, on the following important legal points, which I will now proceed to deal with. As you have approached me without the intervention of a solicitor, it may possibly gratify you to know that I am not entitled to make any charge (even were I disposed to do so) for my professional opinions. This statement will, I am sure, remove a great weight from your mind; but a truce to jesting, now to business. In your first question you ask me to decide whether you or Mr. Anstruther were right on the question of paying excess fares on your return from the Crystal Palace the other evening. So far as the arguments adduced on either side are concerned, I can tell you frankly that you were both wrong; but let me have the facts of the case clearly stated before me. It appears that Aunt Anne, Robert and yourself went down last Wednesday to the Crystal Palace, where you met Miss Anstruther and her brother; and I have no doubt enjoyed yourselves immensely, wandering through those lovely grounds, gazing at the antediluvian monsters on the lakes or listening to the bands in the rosary or on the terrace. In my opinion the Crystal Palace is just the place to spend a happy day. This, however, is a digression. Instead of dining at the Palace, Aunt Anne invited the Anstruthers to return to town with you and to take their chance of getting--what I from personal experience can vouch for as certain to have been--an excellent impromptu meal. On the return journey--we are getting to the point at last--the tickets were collected at Battersea Bridge, your tickets were returns to Victoria, but the Anstruthers had returns to Clapham Junction only, and accordingly Mr. Anstruther was invited to pay excess fare on them. As a matter of fact the price for a return ticket from Victoria to the Palace is exactly the same as a return from Clapham Junction to the Palace, and such being the case, you considered that the collector had no right to demand an excess fare on Mr. Anstruther's tickets. You were wrong. Mr. Anstruther, you say, paid the excess on the ground that it was merely a concession on the part of the Company to those booking at Victoria to charge them the same fare as those booking at Clapham Junction; this may or may not be the case, it is beside the question.