Yours,
     Zerlina

Julia’s: 

Betty dear, —­ You have simply got to come.  Diana tells me she is asking you to Cornwall, and that, I know, you will not refuse, because for some extraordinary reason you can’t refuse her anything.  Oh! for Diana’s charm for one day a week!  What wouldn’t I do!  That woman wastes her life; I’ve always said so.  But go to Cornwall, blazes, or anywhere you like, but come here on your way back —­ everywhere is on the way back from Cornwall.  Because the house is to be full of William’s friends and he is never perfectly at ease unless there is a bishop among them, and a bishop drives me to desperate deeds of wickedness.  They always like me!  Betty, in your capacity of professional something, think of me.  I want helping more than any one.  I don’t ask you to give up Cornwall, but afterwards, don’t disappoint your

     Julia.

A girl’s: 

Dear Miss Lisle, —­ I wonder if you will remember me.  I am almost afraid to hope so.  But I met you last summer at the Anstells’ garden-party, and you passed me an ice, vanilla and strawberry mixed!  I have never forgotten it.  It was not so much passing the ice, lots of people did that, as the way you did it.  I was very unhappy at the time, and there was something in your expression as you did it that made me feel you were unlike any one else I had ever met.  I wore green muslin!

I am wondering whether you would come to Cornwall, to stay with us.  The coast is lovely, and in its wildness one can forget one’s self, and that, I think, is what one most wants to do!  I know what a help you would be to me, if you could come, and I will tell you all my troubles when we have been together some days.  One gets to know people by the sea very quickly, I think, don’t you?  Although I feel as if I had known you all my life.  My hat was brown, mushroom.

     Your sincere friend and admirer,
     Veronica Vokins

P. S. —­ I forgot to say that my father and mother will be delighted to see you.  I have ten brothers and sisters, but there is miles of coast, and I and my five sisters have a sitting-room all to ourselves.  Father says “he” must pass his examinations first.  I tell you this because you will then understand.  “He” won the obstacle race at the Anstells’, but he was in a sack, so I expect you did not notice him!

The big, sad Thomas: 

Dear Miss Lisle, —­ For months, in fact since the day you restored the screw to my small son, I have been trying to write to you on a subject that may or may not be distasteful to you.  That it will come as a surprise I feel sure.  My love for my boy must be my excuse; nothing else could justify my writing to any woman as I am about to write to you.  Will you be a mother to my Thomas?  It would not be honest on my part to pretend that I can offer you in myself anything but a very sad