Your housewifely soul, already rent, I am sure, by this recital of my woes will be still further exercised by a brief description of what happened to my store cupboard. It was very full this autumn, owing to the garden abundance aforesaid, and our conspicuous industry and success in bottling, preserving and pickling,—the shelves simply groaned with good things, and now it is all one inextricable sticky mass of jam, and fruit, and broken glass, and lathe and plaster. You could not imagine anything more disgusting. It is part of the needless waste of war—a little bit, however, that just comes right home. Just one more straw, surely the last. Friend Government Assessor valued the stock of my store cupboard at ten shillings, two dollars and a half. And I just let him, because it was so funny, and there didn’t seem to be any use telling him any more about anything. When I write again I expect it will be all over and the lid shut down on the place that was once a home. I sat a little while to-day on the mossy wall beside the lily pond, one of your numerous garden thrones. Do you remember the day they cleaned it out, and your excitement over the queer little black fresh water cray fish the men took out with their hands and laid on the grass while they swept and scoured the concrete bottom of the pond? They crawled about so painfully, poor things, and if they thought at all, I suppose they must have imagined it the end of the world. Then how pleased you were, and they too, I expect, when they were put back, and the lovely clean water from the upper river ran in on them. It is very clear to-day, and there is a crooning sound in the voice of the waterfall—it sounds almost like a dirge. Summer is quite gone, and the yellowing leaves are drifting down everywhere. Some of them have camouflaged the horrid burned places the incendiary bombs made in the grass. A few late roses hang about rather wistfully, but there doesn’t seem to be any hope anywhere. We don’t quite know what is going to happen, whether this house is going to be rebuilt, and we come back to it. There are immense legal and technical difficulties in a situation for which no precedent or legislation exists. We do not own, but only lease the property, and at the moment don’t know where our responsibility begins or ends. Himself is wrestling with the problem, and the little lines are gathering about his eyes and mouth. He does not say very much at all, and he won’t go near the North House any more. I know he can’t bear it. You and I have often talked of how dear they are, and how they never, never grow up, but are just boys all their days. They can do the fighting, but they can’t do the enduring. That is our bit. I am trying to do mine, all I know how, but I am hard hit this time, Cornelia. I am on my knees. *V*