And lastly, if there should be a Miss Graham--I speak in the abstract, of course, and very, very tentatively--she must be allowed to share none of the homage that every respectable examination insists upon monopolising. She may still be the goddess in your car. For on the whole I think that goddesses (of the right sort) make for careful driving. But at present your eyes must be chiefly upon the reins. You must forgive me for touching upon a topic that you will probably find extremely irrelevant, but there are certain things in a Highland country house that are curiously apt to wander a little from their true perspective. I ought to have mentioned, by the way, that Churchills are sending you a gun, which I hope may arrive safely with this letter. For though I am quite open to conviction about the fishing, I feel rather more certain about the shooting. It was pre-Grahamite, you see--you haven't told me her Christian name--pre-Dollyite, pre-Berylite--and even, if I remember rightly, pre-Looite; so that I think it may safely be accepted as being integral and not merely adventitious. Anyway, there's the gun, and I hope that you'll kill many grouse with it in spite of your sister Molly and her humanitarian comrades. For grouse, like men, must die on a day, and better the quick shot in mid-flight than to crawl away, and to perish slowly in the corner as most of us, alas, will probably have to do when our sunset days come round. I expect you will already have had letters from mother and Molly, if not from Tom and Claire, who are staying with Lady Wroxton at Stoke, and defying the Thames Conservancy in the matter of mixed bathing during most of the forbidden hours. You heard, no doubt, or saw in the papers, that Rupert Morris has had a K added to his C.B.; which means, I suppose, that his little scrap on the frontier was more important than he led us to suppose. In any case, nobody, I should think, has deserved his title more, and quite certainly no one will value it less. He is expected home, I believe, about the end of September, and you will probably meet him at Stoke, where Molly (having squared her conscience) is presently to assist in the extra housekeeping demanded by the partridges and pheasants. With much love, Yr. affect. father, P. H. XXI _To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ 91B HARLEY STREET, W., _August_ 25, 1910. MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE,