That is the gist of what she said. It didn’t run exactly as I have put it down. There were points at which I interrupted, but Robina never listens; she just talks on, and at the end she assumes that, as a matter of course, you have come round to her point of view, and persuading her that you haven’t means beginning the whole thing over again. She said I hadn’t time to talk, and that she would write and tell me everything. Dick also said he would write and tell me everything; and that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper—the sort of thing that, left to themselves, Fortnum & Mason would put together for a good-class picnic, say, for six persons—I might rely upon it that nothing would be wasted. Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the lane. I talked to her very seriously. Her difficulty was that she had not been blown up. Had she been blown up, then she would have known herself she had done wrong. In the book it is the disobedient child that is tossed by the bull. The child that has been sent with the little basket to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull’s way. That is a bit of bad luck for the bull. The poor bull is compelled to waste valuable time working round carefully, so as not to upset the basket. If the wicked child had sense (which in the book does not happen), it would, while the bull was dodging to get past the good child, seize the opportunity to move itself quickly. The wicked child never looks round, but pegs along steadily; and when the bull arrives it is sure to be in the most convenient position for receiving moral lessons. The good child, whatever its weight, crosses the ice in safety. The bad child may turn the scale at two stone lighter; the ice will have none of him. “Don’t you talk to me about relative pressure to the square inch,” says the indignant ice. “You were unkind to your little baby brother the week before last: in you go.” Veronica’s argument, temperately and courteously expressed, I admit, came practically to this: