A LETTFR FROM DOCKLEAF. The Office, May 22 1902.

Otago Witness, Issue 2515, 28 May 1902, Page 67

A LETTFR FROM DOCKLEAF. The Office, May 22 1902.

Dear Dot, — I suppose you are beginning to wonder when you are going to hear from any of the D.L.F. Quartet again. Well, we are all just as much alive as ever, only temporaiy lack of interest in the letters occasioned us to take a spell for a time. I have not been reading the letters lately; but last week a hungry longing for the Witness (if I may use the ternO came over me, and on turning to the L.F. Page, I found a few changes. The condensing column is still in vogue, though ; but I suppose it is one of those necessary evils, and has to be submitted to. I also noticed Daisy Primrose had resigned. I am sure her letters will be very much missed, as they were very interesting and descriptive. We girls have been very busy lately with our play, " Cinderella." We have given up all our spare time to it, and, as there are 14 children in it, you can imagine the practices we have had. However, it i 3 all over now, the girls doing their parts splendidly, so we were fully repaid. We meant to lhave sent you a ticket, Dot, but of course remembered when it was just rather too late. " Ping-pong " — the great game of the day. Have you played it yet, Dot? We got it when it first came in; but nobody here seemed to have it, so we did not bother much with it. Lately, however, have not things begun to boom? We have been stricken with the pingp'ong fever also, and are as enthusiastic over the game as anybody. We hold ping-pong parties every week, and really they are jolly ; but I must say we make an awful row over them. Father declares that we are as bad as boys any day, and ours is the noisest house in the street. He always says when he is returning from his trips he hears us a block away; but we always notice that whenever he can he tries to get home a day sooner. Truth to tell, I'm sure he gets home-sick for our noise; but when we tell him that, of course, like all hia sex, he will not own to it. We wish we had entered for the ping-pong tournament, buy, as is generally the way, left it till it was too late. We are death on the balls lately, and when the fun is at its highest a ball will invariably make for the fire. Sundry hands dive 'in for it, but without aya 1 !, as all at once a big flare bursts forth, just giving us a slight reminder of fireworks on Christmas Eve, and lo! the ping-pong ball has vanished — where, oh, where? Winter is setting in in real earnest now, is it not, although the snow which Mr Paulin has been prognosticating for some time has not yet arrived. However, we keep on believing. I was not going to mention a word about the weather, but quite unconsciously I started. Of course, how can one refrain from the all-absorbing topic? Do you feel it cold at your office lately, Dot? I am right up near the gas-stove, and have just had a new table erected quite clo=e for my typewriter, so I do not think I shall be so badly off. Now, dear Dot and all L.F., as this letter is quite long enough. I must close, with love to one and all from all of us. Yours just the same, DOCKLEAF. [Oh, this is delightful: dear old Dockleaf to the fore once more. Why, I had almost concluded that the D.L.F. Quartet as Dockleaf terms herself and her sisters, had surreptitiously migrated to South Africa, or some other distant clime, and that their place in our page would know them no more, when here the well-known handwriting put in an appearance. lam so pleased that I give Dockleaf a. heading all to herself — for thi3 occasion only, of course, and I am suie ro one in the page will grudge it to her. — DOT.]