bronze and orange, while the breeze stirred the bearded barley into a
rippling golden sea.

Phoebe asked me if the people I had left behind at the Hydropathic were
my relatives.

"Some of them are of remote consanguinity," I responded evasively, and
the next question was hushed upon her awe-stricken tongue, as I intended.

"They are obeying my wish to be let alone, there's no doubt of that," I
was thinking. "For my part, I like a little more spirit, and a little
less 'letter'!"

As the word "letter" flitted through my thoughts, I pulled one from my
pocket and glanced through it carelessly. It arrived, somewhat tardily,
only last night, or I should not have had it with me. I wore the same
dress to the post-office yesterday that I wore to the Hen Conference to-
day, and so it chanced to be still in the pocket. If it had been
anything I valued, of course I should have lost or destroyed it by
mistake; it is only silly, worthless little things like this that keep
turning up and turning up after one has forgotten their existence.

"You are a mystery!" [it ran.] "I can apprehend, but not comprehend
you. I know you in part. I understand various bits of your nature;
but my knowledge is always fragmentary and disconnected, and when I
attempt to make a whole of the mosaics I merely get a kaleidoscopic
effect. Do you know those geographical dissected puzzles that they
give to children? You remind me of one of them.

"I have spent many charming (and dangerous) hours trying to 'put you