It was almost as bad as the time I wore that sweet little yellow Empire gown. It's a dear, and Lyman Wilde simply raved over it when he painted me in it (not that he can really paint, but he has a TOUCH with everything he does). I noticed that everybody seemed solemn and queer, but I never dreamed that I was the cause until my mother-in-law came to me afterward, blushing, and told me that Mr. Talbert never allowed any of the family to wear Mother Hubbards around the house. MOTHER HUBBARDS! I could have moaned. Well, when I go around there now I never care what I have on, and I never pretend to talk at meals; I just sit and try and make my mind a blank until it's over. You HAVE to make your mind a blank if you don't want to be driven raving crazy by that dining-room. It has a hideous black-walnut sideboard, an “oil-painting” of pale, bloated fruit on one side, and pale, bloated fish on the other, and a strip of black-and-white marbled oil-cloth below. I feel sometimes as if I could hardly live until my father-in-law rises from his chair and kisses his wife good-bye before going off to the factory. She always blushes so prettily when he kisses her--as if it were for the first time. Then everybody looks pained when Peter and I just nod at each other as he goes out--I cannot be affectionate to him before them--and then, thank Heaven! the rest of us escape from the dining-room. How Peggy, who has been away from home and seen and done things, can stand it there now as it is, is a continual wonder to me. Peggy is a dear little thing. Peter has always been awfully fond of her, but she doesn't seem to have an idea in her head beyond her clothes and Harry Goward, though she'll HAVE to have something more to her if she's going to keep HIM. The moment I saw that boy, of course I knew that he had the artistic temperament; I've seen so much of it. He's the kind that's always awfully gloomy until eleven o'clock in the morning, and has to make love intensely to somebody every evening. What it must have been to that boy, after indulging in a romantic dream with poor little earnest, downright Peggy, to wake up and find the engagement taken seriously not only by her, but by all her relatives--find himself being welcomed into the family, introduced to them all as a future member--what it must have been to him I can't imagine! Peggy has no more temperament than a cow--the combination of Maria and Tom, and Grandmother Evarts, and Billy with his face washed clean, and Alice with three enormous bows on her hair, all waiting to welcome him, standing by the pictorial lamp on the brown worsted mat on the centre-table, made me fairly howl when I sat at home and thought of it--and that was before I'd SEEN Harry. The family were, of course, quite “hurt” that Peter and I wouldn't assist at the celebration. I cannot see why people WILL want you to do things when they KNOW you don't care to!