“You look very sad this morning,” she said. “But then,” she added, “ladies generally do.” “Why is that?” Violet asked. “They have such difficult lives,” she said. “It’s their husbands, I think.” “But you have a husband.” “Yes, but we don’t notice our husbands as much as you do. They come in and they’re cross and they swear, and we let them. We’ve got our work to get on with. But with ladies it’s different; they take notice.” Your daily poem:— He who bends to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise. If you trap the moment before it’s ripe The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go, You can never wipe off the tears of woe. A lot of wisdom there, but for most of us, who are so far from being children, rather a counsel of perfection.—Good night. R. H. _P.S._—A travelling friend tells me that outside the gate of the Misericordia, in Osaka, Japan, is this notice, the meaning of which is clear after a moment’s examination: “The sisters of the Misericordia harbour every kind of disease and have no respect for religion.” XXXV CLEMENCY POWER TO THE HON. MRS. POWER DEAREST MOTHER,—I have got a job at last—the least like a War job that you could imagine. I have been engaged to read for an hour or so every day to a Miss Raby, a lady who owing to an accident has to lie still for months and months. After all my adventures in France this is a great change. Miss Raby lives near Kington in Herefordshire, a long way from London and indeed a long way from anywhere, but it is fine country and there are splendid hills to walk on, Hargest Ridge in particular, where the air is the most bracing I ever knew, and you look over to the Welsh mountains. She has an old spacious house in its own grounds, but I am lodging with one of the villagers; which I greatly prefer. Miss Raby has a nurse, and one of her nieces, a Mrs. Rossiter, who is charming, is with her. I am a sort of extra help and am gradually being allowed to do more and more and now have had the picking of the flowers entrusted to me. Miss Raby herself is the sweetest creature, a kind of ideal aunt. She is somewhere in the forties, I suppose, and had a very full life, in a quiet way, before she was ill, and she is very brave in bearing her inactivity, which must be terribly irksome at times and especially in very fine weather. I am here nominally to read, but we talk most of the time, and she is never tired of hearing about the War and all my experiences. She knows the part of the garden that every flower comes from, and I think her greatest joy every day is her interview with the gardener.