We talk about you and Nelson and Captain Jethro every day.  The news in your last letter, the one we found at Gibraltar, was perfectly splendid.  So you are to be married in June.  And Galusha and I can’t come to your wedding; that is a shame.  By the time we get back you will be so long settled in the cottage at the radio station that it won’t seem new at all to you.  But it will be very new to us and we shall just love to see it and the new furniture and your presents and everything.  We both think your father’s way of taking it perfectly splendid.  I am glad he still won’t have a word to say to Marietta Hoag or her crowd of simpletons.  Galusha says to tell your father that he must not feel in the least obliged to him for his help in exposing Marietta as a cheat.  He says it was very good fun, really, and didn’t amount to much, anyway.  You and I know it did, of course, but he always talks that way about anything he does.  And your thanks and Captain Jethro’s pleased him very much.

Primmie writes that . . .

(A page omitted.  See Primmie’s letter.)

Please keep an eye on her and see that she doesn’t set fire to the house or feed the corn to the cat and the liver to the hens, or some such foolishness.  And don’t let her talk you deaf, dumb and blind.

There! this letter is so long that I think it will have to go in a trunk, by express or freight or something.  One week more and we start for upper Egypt, by water, up the Nile, at first, then on by automobiles.  Yes, little American automobiles.  Galusha says we shall use camels very little, for which I say “Hurrah, hurrah!” I cannot see myself navigating a camel—­not for long, and it is such a high perch to fall from.  Our love to you and Nelson and to your father.  And oh, so very much to yourself.  And we do wish we might come to your wedding.  We shall be there in spirit—­and that doesn’t mean Marietta’s kind of spirits, either.

Your affectionate friend,

Martha Bangs.

(A letter from Miss Primrose Cash to Mrs. Galusha Bangs.)

East Wellmouth, Massachusetts,
United States of America.  January seventh.

Dear Mrs. Martha: 

I take my pen in hand to write that I am first rate and fine and dandy and hope you and Mr. Galusha are the same, although I am homesick for the sight of you and hope you ain’t.  I mean homesick.  By this time I calculate you must be somewheres over in Egypt or Greek or China or land knows where.  I am sending this letter to the address you give me and if you don’t get it before you get there you will then, I hope and trust.  And I hope, too, you had a good voyage and was not washed overboard or seasick like Captain Ephraim Small’s son, Frankie D., who had it happen to him up on the fish banks, you remember.  I mean the washing overboard