fairy - not sitting on the cloak at present has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same colour, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we began to play, I was the wicked fairy, but Amy objected to that because I am `so nice', so we changed the characters. I wish you could see the glee in her pretty grey eyes over this infantile game, into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half believes in it. `But I needn't really be changed into an owl!' she says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice.
To think that you are shivering in the first snowstorm, or sending the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me, and could sit all this warm, balmy afternoon close to the surf-line which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if you were very good we would let you play.
Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is very full of people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. Here, at the Pension Suisse, we do not see a great many Americans. The fellow boarders are principally Germans and Austrians, with a sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red pebbles, so she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in throwing them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under penalty of her being turned into a muscovy duck. She doesn't know exactly what a muscovy duck a, which makes her all the more particular about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little suite in the round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that it is as good as having a house of our own. The salon is very bright and sunny; we have two sofas, and a square table, and a round table, and a sort of what-not, and two easy chairs, and two uneasy chairs, and a lamp of our own, and a clock. There is also a sofa-bed. There" richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on the walls, including Papa's and Clovy's, and that bad one of Phil and Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red-and-yellow Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk the last thing, for a spot of colour. There are some autumn leaves too, and we always have flowers, and in the mornings and evenings a fire.
Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which, when found, are to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she fails to do this, she is to be changed to an electric eel. The chief difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. `I can't bury you,' I hear her saying.
To return - we have jolly little breakfasts together in the salon.
They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a droll, snappish little garçon with no teeth, and an Italian-French patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me the other day that he had been a garçon for forty-six years, which seemed rather a long boyhood.
The company, as we meet them at table, are rather entertaining. Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behaviour to me because I am travelling with Mrs Ashe, and Mrs Ashe is Lieutenant Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's admirer, and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated confidentially that she is all but engaged to him, but I am not sure about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it proves true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is quite unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, which makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she never seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and gorgeous. She quite takes the colour out of the little Russian countess who sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came from Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses are unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young Austrians. The one who sits nearest to me is a `Candidat' for a Doctorate of Laws, and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English for the past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my French were half as good as his English is already.
There is a very gossiping young woman on the storey beneath ours, whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all manner of romantic tales about people in the house. One little French