"It is just four o'clock in Chicago," I said.

My sister promptly turned her back on me.

"And Billy has just wakened from his nap, and Katy is giving him his
food," I went on. (Billy is my sister's baby.) "And then mamma will
come into the nursery presently and take him while Katy gets his
carriage out, and she will show him my picture and ask him who it is
(because she wrote me she always did it at this time), and then he
will say, 'Tattah,' which is the sweetest baby word for 'Auntie' I
ever heard from mortal lips, and then he will kiss it of his own
accord. Mamma wrote that he had blistered it with his kisses, and it's
one of the big ones, but I don't care; I'll order a dozen more if he
will blister them all. And then she will say, 'Where did mamma and
Tattah go?' and he will wave his precious little square hand and say,
'Big boat,' and she says he tries to say, 'Way off'--and, oh, dear,
we are 'way off'--"

"Stop talking, you fiend," said my sister, from the depths of her
handkerchief. "You know I look like a fright when I cry."

"Boo-hoo," was my only reply. And once started, I couldn't stop. That
deadly English atmosphere of indifference--and, oh--and everything!

Have you ever been homesick when you couldn't get home? Have you ever
wanted to see your mother so that every bone in your body ached? Have
you ever been in the state where to see the baby for five minutes you
would give everything on earth you had? That was the way I felt about
Billy that grewsome night at this amusing play in an English theatre.
I had on my best clothes, but after my handkerchief ceased to avail