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" name for a ship, or for a girl either.
Well, the wind blew just the right way for a splendid launch. I held the cord, letting it out as fast as he told me to, and he gave it a push, and off it sailed, straight and lovely as a duck. I was so delighted I couldn't possibly help clapping my hands, and, oh, Clytie! I dropped the cord, and away it went, up and down over the waves as if it was alive. Randolph muttered something that sounded like, "Bother! that's just like a girl!" and scowled awfully at me, and then ran out into the water after it. I screamed as loud as I could, for I was afraid he would drown; and then I remembered how he had saved my life, and I said to myself, He is my friend now, and I will save him, for he saved _me_ when we were emernies. So, as the story-books say, I "dashed into the foaming billows" after him, and just as I caught him by his jacket I thought I heard him say again, "Bother!" and then came a great rushing noise in my ears, my mouth was full of water, and the next thing I knew I was lying in mamma's bed, and she and two or three other people were rubbing me! I was almost drowned, Clytie; and so it was Randolph who saved _my_ life a second time, and I never saved _his_ at all.