MY DEAR VERENA,—I have only just heard of your accident and cannot understand why you did not let me know sooner. But perhaps, poor thing, you can’t write. I heard it through the Hothams, who had been told by Pauline Bankes. Still even if you can’t write yourself you must have some one there who can. Dictating is not an easy thing, I know, but even a postcard would have been better than nothing, and then I would have written at once to cheer you up. But if you do send a postcard, you will be careful, won’t you, not to put anything very private on it, as they are all read here. It was how the village heard of poor Colonel Onslow’s daughter’s elopement. No doubt you were too ill to think of all your friends, and yet in the night, when one thinks of so much, I wonder my name didn’t occur to you. Writing letters is no hardship to me, as it is to so many people. My brother John, for instance, can’t bring himself to put pen to paper at all, and his study is always littered up with unanswered things. It is very odd, I always think, that the son of so methodical a man as father was should be so careless, but I expect it is a throwback or comes from mother’s side. I am much more like father in so many ways, as well as having the Parrish nose and the ears set so far forward, while John and the others favour the Pegrams. You must let me know if there is anything I can do for you besides writing now and then. Of course, if you were able to knit it would be better, although there is no one to knit for now. All the girls that I see knitting are working only for themselves—those jumpers they wear without corsets, so very indelicate, I think, especially when the bust is at all full. It is all so different from the War, when people were really unselfish. As long as I can remember, I, personally, have knitted for others; not that I want to take credit for it, but it is nice to be able to be of service. When I was a child it was mittens for the gardener and the coachman or else those poor Deep Sea Fishermen. I suppose you have all the books you want. You have always been so well provided for, but there’s a little comforting bedside volume by Frances Ridley Havergal which I am sending in case you should want anything of that sort. It has always helped me, and the other day, after so many years, I read _Queechy_ again and found it quite exciting, so I am putting that in too. Many of the modern books are so _outré_.