How we laughed as you practised riding! Lord Hamlet on a motorcycle, with no time for thought, no time for scruple! How we searched out rough bits of road and watched you try to cross a newly-mown meadow, where late poppies, I remember, were blossoming in the stubble. Once you struck a stone and fell, and your mother amazed you by crying out. I laughed and horrified her; but I kissed its handles before you went. The motorcycle had been to me the most hateful of modern inventions, inexcusable, unmentionable. And here it became a symbol of dauntless courage and highest service; beyond the bravery necessary for a charge in battle is the bravery needed here; this evil, roaring, puffing thing might turn into the chariot that would carry you over the borders of the sun. That one brief hour that we found to steal away to Bagley wood lingers yet. The anemones were gone, but all about was the soft midsummer murmur, and the ripe fulness of August life. What practical things we talked about! I think that we sent you out fitted up as well as any German soldier of them all. Who, in the Kaiser's army, had a more complete or smaller sewing kit? Who had thread wound off on very diminutive bits of cardboard to save the space that spools would take,--white linen and black linen and khaki coloured, all very strong? What Teuton could challenge you on the score of buttons? It was good, it was very good, in your mother to let me help. You thought I never wavered; when you were doubting, I was sure; when you were sure,--you never knew that I wrote you a note that last night and took back my decision, saying that thinkers had their own separate task, and that you should stay. I burned it.... I would not have you back, dear, if it meant giving up that inmost you I knew in those glorified few days. You have fulfilled yourself. September 15. Who is going to keep house for me--that is the problem? Somebody there must be to cook and clean and polish; a staff composed of one British female is what I need, for I can do many, very many things myself. Mine host and my landlady took counsel; I let them do a great deal of thinking for me, for their minds are rusty from disuse; you can actually hear a kind of creaking when they try to make them go. They finally decided that I was to drive in a pony cart to a village off to eastward, to consult Madge and Peter Snell, man and wife, both from a different part of the country, lately employed at the Hall as under-cook and gardener, now out of work because the Hall is closed. I readily agreed; yes, I was used to driving, and the directions--first turn at the left, then a bit of road and a turn at the right, 'm, and then a long stretch across a dike to a stone bridge and a stream and a village spire--seemed clear enough.