DEAR POBBLES: 

I wish you were here to pinch me.  Then I would be sure whether I’m asleep or awake.  You’ll know by the papers (s’pose poor old Rags is worth a paragraph; anyhow Mubs is, now she’s turned into a suff) how we got carried on in the Monarchic to New York.  It won’t be the fault of American reporters if you’ve missed our news!  They got at us on the dock.  Mubs loved it.  Rags didn’t.

Well, if you know a thing about us, since we were swept past Queenstown by a giant wave that carried us on its back all the way to America, you know we’re staying with a family named Rolls.  Rags met Miss Rolls and her brother in London.  And afterward they happened to be on board our ship, so we chummed up, and Miss Rolls would give up her melting suite to poor half-dead Mubs and me.  What a beast the sea is!  I don’t know if I shall ever have the courage to go on the disgusting old wet thing again.  We came here to stay a fortnight, but it’s almost that now, and we couldn’t be driven away with a stick.

We’re having the time of our lives (I’m learning lots of creamy American slang), and the Rollses are awfully kind.  Ena is very nice, when she doesn’t try to talk as if she were English, and quite handsome, with fine eyes, though not so good as her brother’s.  And he—­the brother, I mean—­is the dearest thing in the shape of a man you ever saw.  Not that he’s wonderfully handsome or anything, but, as they say over here, he’s just IT.  I don’t know what there is about him, but—­well, if I go on, I suppose you’ll think I’m being silly.

I don’t care; you were only a year older than I am now when you told Rags kindly to go to the dickens.  You said he cared only for your money, poor Rags!  That wasn’t true.  But now (I know you won’t tell) Ena R. is going for him for all she’s worth.  Mubs doesn’t notice anything about women except their being suffs or not; and I’m supposed to be too young to twig what’s going on.  I need hardly mention, however, that very little gets past yours truly.  I shouldn’t wonder if Ena’d bring it off.  Rags asks me sometimes in a sheep-faced sort of way what I think of things here, and I would have a joyous laugh with him if it weren’t for the brother.

Goodness gracious, but they’re rich, these Rollses!  I could make a pun about their name and their money, but I won’t, because it would be cheap, and nothing is cheap at Sea Gull Manor.  You can get a faint idea what the house and the view are like from the hand-painted sketch at the top of this paper on the left of the fat gold crest.  This stationery is in all the guests’ private sitting-rooms in case any one wants to make distant friends envious of their surroundings.  Mr. Rolls, Sr., told me he kept a tame artist painting these things at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year, dinner and luncheon menus thrown in.  Ena’s idea.  She wanted something original, and what she wants goes!  So says Mr. R.