on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to Burnet.
She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over the
paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could her
correspondents have been brought nearer.


"Nice, December 22.

"Dear Papa and everybody,--Amy and I are sitting on my old purple
cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread the
last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I am a
fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy--not sitting on the
cloak at present--has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling
her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At
present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same
color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we
began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to that
because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish you
could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this infantile game,
into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half
believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! 'she
says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice.

"To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, or sending
the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I
wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me,
and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the surf-line
which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for
you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if
you were very good we would let you play.