do you
good; the little girl means _you_--the bad plum means
_me_--the other plum means some other friend--and all
that about the little girl putting plums to her lips
means--well, it means--but you know you can't expect
_every bit_ of a fable to mean something! And the
little girl grinning means that dear little smile of yours,
that just reaches from the tip of one ear to the tip of the
other!

Your loving friend,

C.L. Dodgson.

I send you 4-3/4 kisses.

The next letter is a good example of the dainty little notes Lewis
Carroll used to scribble off on any scrap of paper that lay to his
hand:--

Chestnuts, Guildford, _January_ 15, 1886.

Yes, my child, if all be well, I shall hope, and you may
fear, that the train reaching Hook at two eleven, will
contain

Your loving friend,

C.L. Dodgson.

Only a few years ago, illness prevented him from fulfilling his usual
custom of spending Christmas with his sisters at Guildford. This is
the allusion in the following letter:--

My dear old Friend,--(The friendship is old, though the
child is young.) I wish a very happy New Year, and many of
them, to you and yours; but specially to you, because I know
you best and love you most. And I pray God to bless you,
dear child, in this bright New Year, and many a year to
come. ... I write all this from my sofa, where I have been
confined a prisoner for six weeks, and as I dreaded the
railway journey, my doctor and I agreed that I had better
not go to spend Christmas with my sisters at Guildford. So I
had my Christmas dinner all alone, in my room here, and
(pity me, Gertrude!) it wasn't a Christmas dinner at all--I
suppose the cook thought I should not care for roast beef or
plum pudding, so he sent me (he has general orders to send
either fish and meat, or meat and pudding) some fried sole
and some roast mutton! Never, never have I dined before, on
Christmas Day, without _plum pudding_. Wasn't it sad?
Now I think you must be content; this is a longer letter
than most will get. Love to Olive. My clearest memory of her
is of a little girl calling out "Good-night" from her room,
and of your mother taking me in to see her in her bed, and
wish her good-night. I have a yet clearer memory (like a
dream of fifty years ago) of a little bare-legged girl in a
sailor's jerse