"Poor old Walter, hung up in the Secretariat, comforts himself that his leave is due next year, and hopes--hopes, the wicked one!--that the war will still be going on then. Your letters are a tremendous interest. I read parts of them to Father and Buff, and last night your tale of the wild Highlander who was 'King of Ypres' so excited them that Father got up to shut the door--you know how he does when he is moved over anything--and Buff spun round the room like a teetotum, telling it all over again, with himself as hero. That child gives himself the most rich and varied existence spinning romances in which he is the central figure. He means to be a Hero when he grows up (an improbable profession!) but I expect school will teach him to be an ordinary sensible boy. And what a pity that will be! By the way, you won't get any more Bible pictures from him. Father had to forbid them. Buff was allowing his fancy to play too freely among sacred subjects, poor old pet! "The war is turning everything topsy-turvy. You never thought to acquire the dignity of a second lieutenant, and I hardly expected to come down the social scale with a rattle, but so it is. I am a housemaid. Our invaluable Ellen has gone to make munitions and I am trying to take her place. You see, I can't go and make munitions, because I must stay with Father and Buff, but it seemed a pity to keep an able-bodied woman to sweep and dust our rooms for us when I could quite well do it. Marget waits the table now, and Mrs. Laidlaw helps her with the kitchen work.