DEAR AUNT VERENA,—I am most awfully sorry to hear from Hazel about your accident. I hope it’s only a blighty and that you will soon be fit again. As I am a great believer in good news as a buck-me-up, I hasten to tell you before anyone else that I am engaged to be married. Every one has always said that I should be all the better for settling down, and really with such a pet as Trixie I am sure they are right. I have not known her very long—we met at a dance at Prince’s—but there are some people that you feel in a minute or so you have known all your life, and she is one of them. If you were not so ill I should bring her to see you at once. She has fair hair, bobbed, and her father is a swell in the India Office. I have not met either him or her mother yet, but Trixie is to let me know directly a favourable opportunity occurs and then I shall butt in. I rather dread the interview, as Mr. Parkinson—that’s her father’s name—is said to be dashed peppery and to have set his heart on her marrying coin; but I daresay I shall pull myself together and play the game. Meanwhile Trixie wants to keep the engagement a secret; and except for two or three pals you are the only person I have told. I haven’t even told Hazel. I ought to tell you that she can drive a car and knows all about them, so she ought to be really a helpmate, as all wives should be, don’t you think? She is nearly eighteen and as I am nearly twenty it is splendid. I have always believed that husbands ought to be older than their wives. It gives them authority. We are thinking of taking our honeymoon in a two-seater on which I have had my eye for some time; but it is rather costly. Everything costs such a lot nowadays. Trixie says she finds me such a relief after so many soldiers. You see, having been in the Army such a short time, I am almost, she says, a civilian; really her first civilian friend; but of course if the War hadn’t stopped I should still be a soldier too.—Your sincere nephew, ROY _P.S._—I’m awfully sorry about your being seedy. There’s nothing like keeping fit and I was never so full of beans myself. Get well soon. Cheerio! XVIII EVANGELINE BARRANCE TO RICHARD HAVEN DEAR MR. HAVEN,—Will you please be very kind and write something for a little paper which I am editing at school for Aunt Verena to read while she is so ill. You are so clever. Something funny if you can, but, if not, something readable. The paper is to be called _The Beguiler; or, The Invalid’s Friend_.—Yours affectionately, EVANGELINE BARRANCE XIX HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY DEAR AUNT,—Just a line to say that I have hit on what I think is a perfect name for my invention, so do not trouble your brains any more. “The Housewife’s Ally.”—Yours sincerely, HORACE MUN-BROWN XX