put
to rest with the other little ones while we are at church. On
returning last Sunday I found that she had secured a box of white
ointment (thought to be quite beyond her reach), and with her
toothbrush painted one side of the baby's face white, which with her
other rosy cheek gave her the appearance of a clown. Not content with
portrait painting, Drusilla then turned her energies to house
decoration, the result attained on the wall being entirely to the
satisfaction of the artist, as was evidenced by the proud smile with
which our outcry was greeted.

The real baby is Beulah, just two years, and she exercises her gentle
but despotic sway over all, from the least to the greatest. She is
continually upsetting the standard of neatness which was once the
glory of this Home, by sprawling on the floors, dragging after her a
headless doll with sawdust oozing from every pore. A dilapidated
bunny and several mangled pictures complete the procession. It is
hopeless to protest, for she just looks as if she could not understand
how any one could object to such priceless treasures. She awakens us
at unconscionable hours in the morning, when all reasonable beings are
still sleeping the sleep of the just, and keeps up a perpetual chatter
interspersed with highly dangerous gymnastic feats upon her bed.

Can you find any babies throughout the British Isles to match mine?

_October 20_

Since last I wrote you we have had a very strenuous time in the Home;
the entire family has been down with measles. Then when that was over
and the children well, the sewing maid, whom I had engaged shortly
after my arrival, gave notice, shook the dust from her feet, and I was
left single-handed. It took the whole of my time to keep these
forty-odd infants fed, clothed, and washed, and I had no leisure to
write to you even at "scattered times." It seemed to me that the
appetites of these _enfants terribles_ grew abnormally, that their
clothes rent asunder with lightning-like rapidity, and that they fell
into mud heaps with even greater facility than usual. It was sometimes
a delicate problem to decide which of many pressing duties had the
prior claim. Whether to try and feed the hungry (the kitchen range
having sprung a leak), to start to repair two hundred odd garments
(the weekly mend), or to resuscitate one of the babies (just rescued
from the reservoir). At such times I would wonder if I were somewhere
near attaining to that state of