_I don't think six months would be too long. I agree that a villa would be much the best, and we're perfectly content to leave the selection to you. You know what room we must have. I suppose two bathrooms would be too much to expect. About servants: we can bring some, but I think we ought to have a French cook to do the marketing, and perhaps one other to keep her company and help in the kitchen and house. Will you see what you can do? Plate and linen, of course, we can bring. By the way, Madge Willoughby tells me that last year in France they had some difficulty about coal; so tell Boy to see if he can order some now. All this, of course, if you can get a villa._ _Your loving sister, DAPHNE._ Berry's came last. _DEAR BROTHER,_ _So we shall ourselves winter this year at Pau?_ Eh bien! _There are, perhaps, worse places. At least, the sun will shine. Ma foi, to think that upon you depend all the arrangements._ Tant pis! _My suite must face itself south and adjoin the bathroom. Otherwise I cannot answer for my health, or, for the matter of that, yours either._ _Kindly omit from your next letter any reference to the mountains. "Impressions of the Pyrenees" by a fool who has been married for less than three weeks not only are valueless, but make my gorge rise--_une élévation très dangereuse. _Which brings me to your wife. How is the shrew? Tell her I have some socks for her to darn on her return._ _It was thoughtful of you to emphasise the fact that the season of green figs, to a surfeit of which I sincerely hope you will succumb, will be over before I reach Pau. I am inclined to think that the five hundred cigars George sent you will be over even earlier. Besides, I shall at once console and distend myself with_ foie gras. _We must have a French cook, of course--a very priestess of Gluttony--skilful to lure the timid appetite from the fastness of satiety._ Enfin.... _I ask myself why I shall have made the trouble to write to you. You have, of course, an opportunity unique of making a mess with a copper bottom of my life for six months._ Mais, mon Dieu, que vous serez puni! Je t'embrasse, vieil haricot, sur les deux joues. _BERRY_ _P.S.--This here letter is a talisman, and should be worn upon the exterior of the abdominal wall during a drought._ Considering the nature of our holiday, Adèle and I did not do so badly. Before we left Pau, I had signed the lease of an attractive villa, standing well in its own grounds and commanding a prospect of the mountains as fine as could be. Adèle had engaged a Frenchwoman and her daughter, both of whom were well spoken of, and had been in the service of English and American families before the War. A supply of fuel had been reserved and various minor arrangements had been concluded. Ere we were back at White Ladies, October was old.