What a sweet time we had together.  I shall never, never forget it!  O Frank, how good you are to me!  And how I hope you won’t regret what you are doing.  It is all very well just now, when I am young and you think that I am pretty.  I love that you should think so, but I am compelled to tell you that it is not really so.  I can’t imagine how you came to think it!  I suppose it was from seeing me so often beside papa.  If you saw me near Nelly Sheridan, or any other really pretty girl, you would at once see the difference.  It just happens that you like grey eyes and brown hair, and the other things, but that does not mean that I am really pretty.  I should be so sorry if there were any misunderstanding about this, and you only found out when too late.  You ought to keep this letter for reference, as papa always says, and then it will be interesting to you afterwards.

I should like you to see me now—­or rather I wouldn’t have you see me for the world.  I am so flushed and untidy, for I have been cooking.  Is it not absurd, if you come to think of it, that we girls should be taught the irregular French verbs, and the geography of China, and never to cook the simplest thing?  It really does seem ridiculous.

But it is never too late to mend, so I went into the kitchen this morning and made a tart.  You can’t imagine what a lot of things one needs even for such a simple thing as that.  I thought cook was joking when she put them all down in front of me.  It was like a conjurer giving his performance.  There was an empty bowl, and a bowl full of sliced apples, and a big board, and a rolling-pin, and eggs, and butter, and sugar, and cloves, and of course flour.  We broke eggs and put them into a bowl—­you can’t think what a mess an egg makes when it misses the bowl.  Then we stirred them up with flour and butter and things.  I stirred until I was perfectly exhausted.  No wonder a cook has usually a great thick arm.  Then when it had formed a paste, we rolled it out, and put the apples in the dish, and roofed it in, and trimmed the edges, and stuck flat leaves made of paste all over it, and the dearest little crown in the middle.  Then we put it into the oven until it was brown.  It looked a very nice tart, and mamma said that I had made it very solidly.  It certainly did feel very heavy for its size.  Mamma would not taste it, because she said that she thought Dr. Tristram would not approve of her doing so, but I had a piece, and really it was not so bad.  Mamma said the servants might have it at dinner, but the servants said that the poor window-cleaner had a large family, and so we gave it to him.  It is so sweet to feel that one is of any use to any one.