He announced that he had two sons and a daughter about the age of my brother and sister.

His letter was very affectionate, and my father responded to it in like manner and told his cousin all about us, his three children.
The correspondence having continued, it was arranged that I should spend my next vacation with my relatives; my sister was to take me there and play the part of mother as she had done during our visit to the Island.
The south, the mountains, this sudden extension of my horizon, the cousins who seemed literally to have fallen from the sky, became the subject of my constant reveries until the month of August, the time set for our departure..