"Well, then, Basil dear, we are not settled anywhere, and if you were to come home now (you call it home, I know, and so will I) you would not know where to find me unless you went to a place I will tell you of presently. First we came to London and stopped there a little while, then we went to Paris, then to Switzerland, and now we have come back to London, where we shall remain two or three weeks, and then go somewhere else, I don't know where. Uncle Gilbert never tells me till the day before, when he says, 'We are going away to-morrow morning; be ready.' So that by the time you receive this letter we shall be I don't know where. Uncle Gilbert is very fond of theatres, but he has not taken me to one because he says they are not proper places for girls. I daresay he is right, and I don't know that I want to go, but aunt has been very dissatisfied about it, as she is as fond of theatres as Uncle Gilbert is. He used to go by himself, and aunt would stop with me to take care of me, but a little while ago, a day or two before we came back to London, they had a quarrel about it. They did not notice that I was in the room when they begun, and when they found it out they stopped. But I think it is because of the quarrel that when we were in London a young woman was engaged to travel with us and to look after me when uncle and aunt are away. I am very glad for a good many reasons. I am not very happy when they are with me, and I breath more freely--or perhaps I think I do--when they are gone. The young woman they have engaged is kind and good-natured, and I have grown fond of her already, and she has grown fond of me, so we get along nicely together. Her name is Emily Crawford, and she has a mother who lives in Bournemouth, a place by the sea somewhere in England. Her mother is a poor woman, and that is why Emily is obliged to go to service, but she is not a common person, not at all, and she has a good heart. She can read and write very well, and she picks up things quicker than I can. Of course you want to know why I speak so much of Emily, when I might be writing about myself. Well, it is very, very important, and it _is_ about myself I am speaking when I am speaking of her.