“Just to make you laugh I’ll write you a little story I heard Uncle Alec telling last night.  It was about Elder Frewen’s grandfather taking a pair of rope reins to lead a piano home.  Everybody laughed except Aunt Janet.  Old Mr. Frewen was HER grandfather too, and she wouldn’t laugh.  One day when old Mr. Frewen was a young man of eighteen his father came home and said, ’Sandy, I bought a piano at Simon Ward’s sale to-day.  You’re to go to-morrow and bring it home.’  So next day Sandy started off on horseback with a pair of rope reins to lead the piano home.  He thought it was some kind of livestock.

“And then Uncle Roger told about old Mark Ward who got up to make a speech at a church missionary social when he was drunk. (Of course he didn’t get drunk at the social.  He went there that way.) And this was his speech.

“’Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, I can’t express my thoughts on this grand subject of missions.  It’s in this poor human critter’—­patting himself on the breast—­’but he can’t git it out.’

“I’ll tell you these stories when you get well.  I can tell them ever so much better than I can write them.

“I know Felicity is wondering why I’m writing such a long letter,
so perhaps I’d better stop.  If your mother reads it to you there
is a good deal of it she may not understand, but I think your
Aunt Jane would. 
      “I remain
              “your very affectionate friend,
                                       “SARA STANLEY.”

I did not keep a copy of my own letter, and I have forgotten everything that was in it, except the first sentence, in which I told Peter I was awful glad he was getting better.

Peter’s delight on receiving our letters knew no bounds.  He insisted on answering them and his letter, painstakingly disinfected, was duly delivered to us.  Aunt Olivia had written it at his dictation, which was a gain, as far as spelling and punctuation went.  But Peter’s individuality seemed merged and lost in Aunt Olivia’s big, dashing script.  Not until the Story Girl read the letter to us in the granary by jack-o-lantern light, in a mimicry of Peter’s very voice, did we savour the real bouquet of it.

PETER’S LETTER

“DEAR EVERYBODY, BUT ESPECIALLY FELICITY:—­I was awful glad to get your letters.  It makes you real important to be sick, but the time seems awful long when you’re getting better.  Your letters were all great, but I liked Felicity’s best, and next to hers the Story Girl’s.  Felicity, it will be awful good of you to send me things to eat and the rosebud plate.  I’ll be awful careful of it.  I hope you won’t catch the measles, for they are not nice, especially when they strike in, but you would look all right, even if you did have red spots on your face.  I would like to try the Mexican Tea, because you want me to, but mother says no, she doesn’t believe in it, and Burtons Bitters are a great deal healthier.  If I was you I would get the velvet hood all right.  The heathen live in warm countries so they don’t want hoods.