I have forgotten if I really did send a line in Annie’s letter or not. I know I wanted to, but since that I have received that precious “gingerbread” letter from all the family, and I have read and re-read, and spied into little corners to see some other welcome face peeping out. It was so good of Willis and Ber to set their hands and seals. Yes, I know all about receiving letters that call directly upon my heart, and my desire to answer that hour, and a thousand times I have said that _those_ were the very letters which were to lie longest in neglect and likely enough never get answered at all. The fact is I am over-anxious about them, and wait for a few moments of better opportunity, feeling that I have much to say, and so I wait and wait, _and these_ letters are the sore spot, the worrying sin of my existence, _that_ little package which I cannot put by, but which lies around, and looks me in the face on the most impossible of occasions, and reproaches in silence, and comes late at night and early in the morning to haunt, it may be to taunt, me a little; _that_ little package is the plague of my life, and yet I prize it most of all and couldn’t have done without it, but I can never quite dispose of it. Oh, yes, yes, I do understand all you try so patiently to explain to me, ONLY that I don’t think my poor scrap could ever have been one of the class of letter which burden me, for I have no recollection whatever of it, and seriously suspect it was only a little pile of trash. It has been brave of you not to get sick in all summer with all your work, and company and sickness besides, but I am so glad that Sally was with you, and I suppose Vester was also, but it is not mentioned where he was during his illness.