“If you have been wasting your time in being devoted to some of the many girls who used to attract your attention, and neglecting the Park mystery case, I feel that I can never forgive you.

“I forgot to tell you in my last that we met Clara Chamberlain and her mother here. They came over for a day to arrange with their lawyers something about Clara’s Washington property. Clara confessed to me that the report which was published awhile ago concerning her engagement was true. You remember none of us credited it at the time. Well, it is true, and the wedding is to be celebrated privately on the seventh. Auntie is to go and I promised Clara I would be there. Will this not be rather a blow to your friend Chauncey Osborne?

“Her fiancé, I believe, is quite unknown in our set. You know how very peculiar dear Clara always was! She, of course, says that he is charming and a man of culture and ability, a prominent politician and bound to make a stir in the world.

“Auntie met an old friend here, Mr. Schuyler, who went to school with auntie. They have been living their school-days over again—it seems they were boy and girl lovers—and to hear them laugh over the things they used to do makes me laugh from very sympathy.

“Do you know, girls don’t have half the fun now that they did in auntie’s day. I will never be able, when I get to be an old woman, to sit down and recall with a playmate the funny scrapes we got into when we were children. When I hear auntie and Mr. Schuyler talk, I feel so sorry that my life has been so common-place.

“But there—I have written four times as much as you did in your last. Mr. Schuyler is going over to New York with us, and we are going to show him about. He has not been there since he was a boy.

“Hoping you have been a good boy during my absence, I am,

“Very sincerely your (s),

“Penelope.”