k it will be
great sport to be the only girls in the house, and have no elder sister
left to rule over them. The brother, Ned, is in love with the girls'
great friend, Kitty Maitland, but she snubs him, though the girls say
she likes him all the time, and only does it to pay him back for the way
he used to snub her as a child, and because he is so conceited that she
thinks it will do him good. He really _is_ a good deal spoiled by all
those six sisters.

You see everybody seems to be falling in love and getting married except
me, and I shall be an old maid. I don't like anyone, and I don't like
anyone to like me. I feel quite angry if anyone pays me the least
attention, and yet I'm lonely inside. Oh, Miles, why did you go so far
away, and turn into a great bearded stranger, when I wanted you at home
to talk to every day? I hate Mexico, and the valley, and the mine, and
"my chum Gerard"--"my chum Gerard" most of all, because I'm so jealous
of him. What business had he to nurse you, I should like to know! But
I pity him, if you were as cross as you used to be when you had a cold
in the old days, and had to put your feet into mustard and water! How
well I remember it! First the water was too hot, then it was too cold,
and in the end there, was no water left in the bath, and the furniture
was afloat. Jack is not half so _difficile_ as you used to be! He has
grown such a dear old thing, just as merry and mischievous as ever, but
so kind, and thoughtful, and nice all round. Father is very proud of
him, and he is the old General's special pet, and half lives there when
he is at home. As for Jill, she is a MINX in capital letters. So
pretty and gay, and funny and charming, and naughty and nice, and
aggravating and coaxing, and lazy and reckless, and altogether different
from everybody else, that my poor little nose is quite out of joint, and
I heard an impertinent young man speaking of me the other night as "Jill
Trevor's sister"! That's what I have descended to, after all my lofty
ambitions--_Jill's sister_! How furious I should have been in the old
days, but now I don't seem to mind. Are you changed very much, old
Miles? Inside, I mean, I'm not thinking of the horrid beard. You are
such a reserved person that your letters leave one in ignorance of the
real _you_. "My chum Gerard" knows you better than I do nowadays. What
an awful thought! Life seems so different now from what it did at
eighteen, and all