send for them?" said Miss Noel.

"What! you know that she reads your letters?" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum,
surprised.

"Oh, dear, yes. They all do. It is very tiresome, but they will do it.
Parsons is generally good enough to let me have them quite promptly; but
she reads them, of course,--all but my cousin Blanche Best's letters.
Blanche has always been my most intimate friend, and can't bear the idea:
so she blocked the game by a most ingenious device. She writes one
sentence in French, the next in Italian, the third in English,--at least
she did until a happier plan suggested itself: now she writes English in
German text. It answers perfectly; but it is having a great effect on
Parsons, quite undermining her constitution, I fear, especially when
important things are happening at 'The Court,' where I often go. I
sometimes wickedly slip one of Blanche's letters under the pin-cushion, as
if with the intention of concealing it, and I have so enjoyed seeing
Parsons whip it under her apron when she got the chance, knowing that she
could not make out a single word. She really looked quite green afterward
for a week: pure chagrin."

"I am sure I have done everything that I could think of to keep my letters
from my man," said Sir Robert, "but quite without success. I think he
finds my correspondence a little dull sometimes, as compared with that of
a former place. He came to me from the greatest scamp in England; and I
can fancy that the letters there were very various and diverting. My own
must be altogether too ponderous and respectable for a taste formed on
sensational models."

"Well, all I have got to say is that if I caught a servant of mine at that