I had lunch, after which I went to my room to write to Dora. I am doing
the best I can not to bother the little girl, yet I'm afraid I always
turn out something like a begging letter. But she always answers in a way
that is ever so friendly and nice. In her last letter she dragged in
again the fact that we were both still young, with the quite inaccurate
corollary that we didn't know our own minds yet. I told her my mind was
made up more inexorably than the laws of the Medes and the Persians, that
it was not going to change, and that if her own mind was as yet so
immature and youthful that it was not fully grown, she ought to give me a
better chance to help in its development. I suppose that in her answer
she will ignore this and speak of something else. That is what always
makes me so mad at Dora, bless her little heart!




CHAPTER XI

_From Miss Helen Jelliffe to Miss Jane Van Zandt_


_Dearest Aunt Jennie_:

I was looking at the calendar, this morning, and thought that some one
had made an extraordinary mistake, but I am now convinced that it will be
four weeks to-morrow since we first arrived in Sweetapple Cove. Your
accounts of delightful doings in Newport are most interesting, yet I am
sure that with you the time cannot possibly fly as it does here.

At present dear old Daddy is reclining in a steamer chair on the porch of