if we take you), Cousin Frank
and Miss Carleton, only she won't be Miss Carleton then--she will be
_Mrs. Howard_, and I am to call her Cousin Carrie: indeed, I call her so
now, for Cousin Frank asked me to, and I would do anything to please
him. I have forgiven him for sending me away one night when they were
talking about little pitchers. When I asked him about it afterward, and
if it was really deckerativeart they meant, he tried to exclaim to me,
but he laughed so hard all the time, I couldn't make out anything at all
except that _I_ was the very funniest little pitcher in the whole world!
Did you ever know such a comical thing as to call _me_, a girl ten years
old, a _pitcher_? I'm sure he didn't know what he was talking about.
Mamma says I may give them anything I choose for a wedding present, and
I have presided on a silver pitcher. I am going to send it with a card
tied on the handle marked, "_This is me_," and I guess they will wonder
what it means. Don't you?
I have told Cousin Carrie so much about you that she seems to love you
already, even though she has never seen you, and she says she shall
invite you to her wedding. Won't that be fun? She is going to send you
her cards, and you will go with me. I shall get home in time to have
your dress made. Mine is to be a bomination dress of white cashmere and
silk, and I think yours will be of the same kind in rose-color.
I will tell you one more adventure that befell us at Bar Harbor, and
then I shall not write any more letters unless you are left at home when
I go to Europe. Of course, if you are, I shall write as often as I
possibly can, and I shall have so many new and strange appearances in
crossing the ocean and in visiting forran lands that the reading of them
will make up in some agree for being left at home.
Randolph and I went down to the beach, the evening before we came away,
to launch his ship--a beautiful one, with sails all set, "full-rigged,"
as the sailors say, that his uncle in Philadelphia had sent him that
very day.
The Stars and Stripes waved from the prow or stern--I never know which
is which--and on the top of one of the masts he fastened a "pennon," as
he called it, with the name of the ship in big blue letters. (He printed
it himself with his blue pencil, and it looked real cunning blowing
round in the wind, and flapping up and down.) What do you suppose the
name was? _Bessie_, to be sure. He says he thinks it is an "awfully
jolly"
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