hat we want to paint it and
paper it, but we would like to pat it and squeeze it. If you
can't live in it yourself, even in the summer, perhaps you
will be glad to know we love it so much and want to take good
care of it always. What troubles us is the fear that you will
take it away or sell it to somebody before Gilbert and I are
grown up and have earned money enough to buy it. It was Cousin
Ann that put the idea into our heads, but everybody says it is
quite likely and sensible. Cousin Ann has made us a splendid
present of enough money to bring the water from the well into
the kitchen sink and to put a large stove like a furnace into
the cellar. We would cut two registers behind the doors in the
dining-room and sitting-room floors, and two little round
holes in the ceilings to let the heat up into two bedrooms, if
you are willing to let us do it. [Mother says that Cousin Ann
is a good and generous person. It is true, and it makes us
very unhappy that we cannot really love her on account of her
being so fault-finding; but you, being an American Consul and
travelling all over the world, must have seen somebody like
her.]

Mr. Harmon is writing to you, but I thought he wouldn't know so
much about us as I do. We have father's pension; that is three
hundred and sixty dollars a year; and one hundred dollars a
year from the Charlestown house, but that only lasts for four
years; and two hundred dollars a year from the interest on
father's insurance. That makes six hundred and sixty dollars,
which is a great deal if you haven't been used to three
thousand, but does not seem to be enough for a family of six.
There is the insurance money itself, too, but mother says
nothing but a very dreadful need must make us touch that. You
see there are four of us children, which with mother makes
five, and now there is Julia, which makes six. She is Uncle
Allan's only child. Uncle Allan has nervous prostration and
all of mother's money. We are not poor at all, just now, on
account of having exchanged the grand piano for an
old-fashioned square and eating up the extra money. It is great
fun, and whenever we have anything very good for supper
Kathleen says, "Here goes a piano leg!" and Gilbert says,
"Let's have an octave of white notes for Sunday supper,
mother!" I send you a little pho