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Dearest Brob:

This is only a word,—more to beg you to come down for Garth's birthday, than anything else. I know you're very busy, but surely you can run away for a day or two. Joan is still here, but you can bunk with 'Bijah in his queer little shack if we can't wring another sleeping-place from Silver Shoal. Please don't spend anything on a present for Garth,—you're always too generous. Give it to the Belgian babies, or to your tenement infants, if you'd rather. If you've a sketch of a ship, or something, that you don't want, he'd adore it to hang in his room. Don't try to let us know, if you're not sure that you can come. 'Bijah will bring you out, and we shall be ready for you at any time.

Jim has had a very mysterious correspondence with the Government of late, and goes off to-morrow to "have another try at the Navy," as he says. I do hope that he won't be disappointed.

Garth has been scribbling beside me for the last half hour, and now proffers the enclosed. The spelling seems to have run wild in spots, but he's either too haughty to ask for assistance, or too considerate to interrupt me (I like to think it's the latter!). And apparently last winter's lessons are so much things of the dim past as to have left no very visible results! But I think that you will like the letter, and you would like to have seen him writing it,—so very