"So the little girls went dancing home again, and the next morning they came dancing back to school. The scratches were all healed, and they told me 'The kittens _have_ been good!' And, when any kitten wants to catch a mouse, it just takes off _one_ of its gloves; and if it wants to catch _two_ mice, it takes off two gloves; and if it wants to catch _three_ mice, it takes off _three_ gloves; and if it wants to catch _four_ mice, it takes off all its gloves. But the moment they've caught the mice, they pop their gloves on again, because they know we can't love them without their gloves. For, you see 'gloves' have got 'love' _inside_ them--there's none _outside_! "So all the little girls said, 'Please thank Maggie, and we send her 250 _loves_, and 1000 _kisses_ in return for her 250 kittens and her 1000 _loves_!!' And I told them in the wrong order! and they said they hadn't. "Your loving old Uncle, "C. L. D. "Love and kisses to Nellie and Emsie." This letter takes up eight pages of close writing, and I should very much doubt if any child ever had a more charming one from anybody. The whimsical fancy in it, the absolute comprehension of a child's intellect, the quickness with which the writer employs the slightest incident or thing that would be likely to please a little girl, is simply wonderful. I shall never forget how the letter charmed and delighted my sister Maggie and myself. We called it "The glove and kitten letter," and as I look at the tremulous handwriting which is lying by my side, it all comes back to me very vividly--like the sound of forgotten fingers on the latch to some lonely fireside watcher, when the wind is wailing round the house with a wilder inner note than it has in the daytime. At Eastbourne I was happier even with Lewis Carroll than I was at Oxford. We seemed more free, and there was the air of holiday over it all. Every day of my stay at the house in Lushington Road was a perfect dream of delight. There was one regular and fixed routine which hardly ever varied, and which I came to know by heart; and I will write an account of it here, and ask any little girl who reads it, if she ever had such a splendid time in her life.