Well, my dearest, I have one Redfern hat, and only one.  Mamma says I cannot expect to have more until I come out, which is bitter.  However, this one is a beauty, and yet cost only thirty dollars.  It goes well with nearly all my dresses, and is immensely becoming, all the girls say:  very high, with long pointed wings and stiff bows. Simple, my dear, doesn’t express it!  You know I LOVE simplicity; but it is Redferny to a degree, and everybody has noticed it.

Well, my dearest Queen, here am I running on about myself, as if I were not actually EXPIRING to hear about you.  What my feelings were when I called at your house on that fatal Tuesday and was told that you had gone to spend the summer on a farm in the depths of the country, passes my power to tell.  I could not ask your mother many questions, for you know I am always a little bit AFRAID of her, though she is perfectly lovely to me!  She was very quiet and sweet, as usual, and spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a brilliant society girl (for that is what you are, Hilda, even though you are only a school-girl; and you NEVER can be anything else!) to spend her summer in a wretched farm-house, among pigs and cows and dreadful ignorant people.  Of course, Hilda dearest, you know that my admiration for your mother is simply IMMENSE, and that I would not for worlds say one syllable against her judgment and that of your military angel of a father; but I MUST say it seemed to me MORE than strange.  I assure you I hardly closed my eyes for several nights, thinking of the MISERY you must be undergoing; for I KNOW you, Hildegarde! and the thought of my proud, fastidious, high-bred Queen being condemned to associate with clowns and laborers was really MORE than I could bear.  Do write to me, darling, and tell me HOW you are enduring it.  You were always so sensitive; why, I can see your lip curl now, when any of the girls did anything that was not tout a fait comme il faut! and the air with which you used to say, “The little things, my dear, are the only things!” How true it is!  I feel it more and more every day.  So do write at once, and let me know all about your dear self.  I picture you to myself sometimes, pale and thin, with the “white disdain” that some poet or other speaks of, in your face, but enduring all the HORRORS that you must be subjected to with your OWN DIGNITY.  Dearest Hilda, you are indeed a HEROINE!

Always, darling,
Your own deeply devoted and sympathizing
MADGE.