I live at the Inn during these days while my house is being put in order. A glazier has been found who can re-set the old diamond panes; carpenter and plumber are hard at work. The hideous wall-papers in the chambers have been scraped off; they were so ugly that they actually hurt. You always told me, you remember, that I minded too much the things that make for ugliness, that my eye was too sensitive to evil-coloured and unshapely things, and that I must live more in the world of thought. The contrast between these, in their wicked purples and magentas, and the wonderful cottage itself with its dim beauty of old brick and dusky panelling, makes one wonder at the potential depravity of the heart of modern man or woman! There's a shop in London,--I was going to take you there,--where they have reproductions of quaint old papers, the kind made a hundred years ago, with little landscapes, and sheep and shepherds, and odd flower designs. I chose three of these, and they are going on at this minute; I must go to see that they piece the two bits of the shepherdess together neatly and do not leave her head and her beribboned hat dangling several inches above her embroidered bodice. It is a relief to escape from the purple cow and the hundred and one china abominations in this sitting room. My landlady, fingering her black alpaca dress apron, assures me as I go, that the best of news, 'm, has come from the front; that the Germans are in full retreat, and the French and the British are nearing Berlin! If only this insular confidence that for Britons there is no defeat be not too rudely broken! Don went with me; I went to Oxford to get him during my week away. I am so glad, so very glad that you let me have him when you went to war. He potters along behind me or runs ahead, with all his questing little fox-terrier soul in his eyes, sure, like myself, that around some corner, or on some blessed rise of ground, we shall meet you. At each fresh disappointment he turns to me with that look of perfect trust in his eyes that I, some day when it seems fit, will give you back to him. Within five minutes, at his first visit to the little red house, he had sniffed every corner, and he dropped with a deep sigh of content on the warm brick walk, knowing the place for his own.