I am so busy that you must be extra pleased, please, to get a letter today. The translation of Papa's book has ended by interesting me to such an extent that I can't leave off working at it. I do it officially in his presence for an hour daily, he as full of mistrust of my English as ever, trying to check it with a dictionary, and using picturesque language to convey his disgust to me that he should be so imperfectly acquainted with a tongue so useful. He has forgotten the little he learned from my mother in the long years since her death, and he has the natural conviction of authors in the presence of their translators that the translator is a grossly uncultured person who will leave out all the _nuances_. For an hour I plod along obediently, then I pretend I must go and cook. What I really do is to run up to my bedroom, lock myself in, and work away feverishly for the rest of the morning at my version of the book. It is, I suppose, what would be called a free translation, but I protest I never met anything quite so free. Papa's book is charming, and the charm can only be reproduced by going repeatedly wholly off the lines. Accordingly I go, and find the process exhilarating and amusing. The thing amuses and interests me; I wonder if it would amuse and interest other people? I fear it would not, for when I try to imagine it being read by my various acquaintances my heart sinks with the weight of the certainty that it couldn't possibly. I imagine it in the hands of Joey, of Frau von Lindeberg, of different people in Jena, and the expression my inner eye sees on their faces makes me unable for a long while to go on with it. Then I get over that and begin working again at my salad. It really is a salad, with Papa as the groundwork of lettuce, very crisp and fresh, and myself as the dressing and bits of garnishing beetroot and hard-boiled egg. I work at it half the night sometimes, so eager am I to get it done and sent off. Yes, my young friend, I have inherited Papa's boldness in the matter of sending off, and the most impressive of London publishers is shortly to hold it in his sacred hands. And if his sacred hands forget themselves so far as to hurl it rudely back at me they yet can never take away the fun I have had writing it. Yours sincerely, ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.