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 I needn't have been a bit afraid; your butler is such a nice, fatherly old man that he made me feel at home at once. "Is this Miss Abbott?" he said to me, and I said, "Yes," so I didn't have to ask for Mr. Smith after all. He told me to wait in the drawing-room. It was a very somber, magnificent, man's sort of room. I sat down on the edge of a big upholstered chair and kept saying to myself:

"I'm going to see Daddy-Long-Legs! I'm going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!"

Then presently the man came back and asked me please to step up to the library. I was so excited that really and truly my feet would hardly take me up. Outside the door he turned and whispered, "He's been very ill, Miss. This is the first day he's been allowed to sit up. You'll not stay long enough to excite him?" I knew from the way he said it that he loved you—and I think he's an old dear!