Probably you'll mention the word "damn" or some other analogous one when you read that. "_Fun!_" you'll sneer. But my dear fellow, it expresses my point of view. I _am_ having fun. I'm having the time of my life. Afterward--"let come what come may, I shall have had my day." And I'm going to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer--unless Caspian undermines me and blows up my trenches. The latter, by the way, are of a homely character. I lurk in lodgings at the village dressmaker's. I have one room at the back of the house, its dormer window looking over a grass plot and a chicken coop. Fortunately the cock is as morose and reserved an individual as I am myself, without my sense of humour--or else he's henpecked. He never opens his head till it's necessary to salute the sunrise; and the hens consider it bad form to boast loudly because a mere egg has been given to the world. For this accommodation I pay four dollars a week, and ten cents a day for having a rubber bath filled. Breakfast of bread, butter, and coffee is brought to my room by a timid fawn of a dressmaker's daughter who does me the honour of fearing and admiring me, I surmise. I pay twenty cents for her attendance and admiration. Mine is the simple life, but luxurious compared with many of my experiences. As to clothes, I am always Hyde, never Jekyll. It's safer. My hat is the worst thing in hats you ever beheld, though I have at times surpassed it. You would think I ought to have plenty of leisure on my hands for the work I brought from Siberia, but I confess the girl has got between me and it. Don't waste a smile. No girl born could tempt me to what I should have to give up for her. Besides, there are a thousand other obstacles between me and love. If she wastes a few thoughts on me--as perhaps she does sometimes--it's only curiosity concerning the "Ship's Mystery." That's what they all called me on board, I heard. But there is the past, a faded yet beautiful background of early youth--one of the few really beautiful things in my life. And there is the girl, a radiant figure in the foreground. I'm in the house at Kidd's Pines often enough, doing my secretarial work (a howl of laughter here, please!), to see pretty well all that goes on, and the demoniac joy I feel in acting as _deus ex machina_ I can't express to you, because I don't entirely understand it myself. But I wouldn't be out of this for anything.