heard from her, you know."

ASHBURN, April 24.


DEAR KATY,--Your delightful letter and invitation came day
before yesterday, and thank you for both. There is nothing in
the world that would please me better than to come to your
wedding if it were possible, but it simply isn't. If you lived
in New Haven now, or even Boston,--but Burnet is so dreadfully
far off, it seems as inaccessible as Kamchatka to a person who,
like myself, has a house to keep and two babies to take care of.

Don't look so alarmed. The house is the same house you saw when
you were here, and so is one of the babies; the other is a new
acquisition just two years old, and as great a darling as Daisy
was at the same age. My mother has been really better in health
since he came, but just now she is at a sort of Rest Cure in
Kentucky; and I have my hands full with papa and the children,
as you can imagine, so I can't go off two days' journey to a
wedding,--not even to yours, my dearest old Katy. I shall think
about you all day long on _the_ day, when I know which it is,
and try to imagine just how everything looks; and yet I don't
find that quite easy, for somehow I fancy that your wedding will
be a little different from the common run. You always were
different from other people to me, you know,--you and
Clover,--and I love you so much, and I always shall.

Papa has taken a kit-kat portrait of me in oils,--and a blue
dress,--which he thinks is like, and which I am going to send