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and when she takes a thing so, it generally is granted; and here I am.

“Aunt Selina is comfortably established in a little house of her own in Hampstead, and I don’t mind telling you in confidence that I feel myself at least ten years younger since we crossed the Line. This is not quite my own, my native land, but it’s under the same stars, anyhow; and this funny old-young village by the sea, and this pretty rambling wooden house, which Clare has made homelike and comfortable already, is quite dear to me even now. Perhaps , even, I may be able to sing again! Ah! then you shall come and buy tickets, even all the way from Skye, at tremendous prices.

“But to return to the present. It is very hot, just the time of year when summer takes the first downward step and the days begin imperceptibly to shorten. In England you say, ‘As the day lengthens the cold strengthens.’ Well, here, below the Line, as the day shortens the heat increases. There is a thick haze of smoke from the bush fires in the ranges, and a curious burnt smell in the air. I like it! it is so native, and so truly colonial! The smoke hangs over the wide clover-carpeted plains that lie between our village and the great dividing ranges, and I can see nothing of their purple pedestals or