in any case I believe there is some new kind of paint which smells delicious, like stephanotis, I am told, so I will order that.  I would not ask you to come just as we are going away, because I should like to be at home to see you, but I could go away so happily if you were with the children; I often think for a woman without children, you are so wonderfully understanding, about children, I mean.  You could manage nurse, too, I am sure.  She is in one of her moods just now, and I feel I must get away from all worries for a little.

Yours,

ZERLINA

P. S. —­ Jim is so well, and would send his love if he were here.

I telegraphed back, of course, directly I got Zerlina’s telegram, saying I could not come, and answered the letter at leisure.  It is as a sister-in-law in relation to the aunt that Diana particularly shines.  This aunt she looks upon as something more than useful, and asks her to stay at other times than when the children have measles, and whooping-cough, or the bedroom is to be re-papered.  Zerlina perhaps is unfortunate.  She says, “Have you ever noticed how the children always have something when you come to stay?” Zerlina is quite pretty when she puts her head on one side.  I answer, “Yes, Zerlina, I have noticed it curiously enough,” but I do not say that I suspect that at the very first sound of a cough, at the very first appearance of a rash, this aunt is urged to come and stay.

Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty, Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence.  But those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or other.  A smile is enough.

So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina’s appeal, with treasures deep down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara.  Sara is of all babes in the world the most fascinating, say sisters-in-law other than Diana what they will.  As a tribute to this fascination, the largest white rabbit, woolly to a degree undreamed of —­ at least I hoped so —­ in Sara’s world, was carefully packed in my box, wrapped cunningly in tissue-paper, and guarded on all sides by clothing of a soft description.  I have known a chiffon skirt put to strange uses in the interests of Sara.

I found the carriage waiting for me, and was touched to see that Croft, the old coachman, had come to meet me himself.  It is an honor he does the family with perhaps two or three exceptions.  When he comes to meet me,, there is a regular program to be gone through.  It varies only in a very slight degree and begins like this:  —­