MY DEAR JOSEY,—I am sorry for all your perplexities; but I can’t offer any help. Your father probably knows best, but even if he doesn’t, he must be considered too, because he is your father and you are a child. Besides, I find myself agreeing with what he says. Since you have asked my advice you must listen to it, and my advice is to obey your father and tell Vincent that you intend to do so. Your father has been very understanding. He has not forbidden you to see Vincent at all, as many fathers would have done; he has merely said that there are certain rules between you and him which must be respected. I think he is right, for two reasons. One because it is his house and he must be the head of it, and the other because you would be losing such a lot of your young life if you had your way and married now. Girls should be engaged; women married. To leave school and come into a world such as yours and then miss all the fun of it between your age and twenty-one, is to be very foolish. It is throwing away a very delightful freedom. Another thing—don’t you owe anything to your father? You say that our first duty is to ourselves. I am not sure that we can always separate ourselves. Very often, and usually while we are living under other people’s roofs and taking other people’s money, we are not ourselves but a blending of ourselves and themselves. Aren’t you and your father a little bit mixed up like that? Isn’t he entitled a little longer to the company of the daughter he is so fond of? Think about it from his point of view.—Your loving AUNT V. LXVII VINCENT FRANK TO JOSEY RABY JOSEY PET,—My own sphinxling, I adore having your letters, but don’t you think it might be best to put all three or four each day into one envelope and post them. With special messengers so constantly coming, the fellows here get to suspect things and are so poisonously funny about it. There is no chaff I wouldn’t stand so long as you loved me, but now and then too much chipping gets on one’s nerves, darling. I shall be at the Pic. on Saturday at 7.5 and have taken our usual table.—Yours ever, VIN ORDINAIRE LXVIII SIR SMITHFIELD MARK TO BRYAN FIELD MY DEAR FIELD,—By a most extraordinary chance, I do know of a man in the country—and the desired country at that—Herefordshire, in fact. He is a Bart’s contemporary and a very old friend, and he not only needs a holiday but is going to take one with me. Everything is arranged. I have secured him by holding you out as the best possible substitute. I am grateful to you for writing to me, for it is too long since we went away together and too long since I threw a fly in Sutherland, where we are going. Communicate with him direct: Sinclair Ferguson, Kington, Herefordshire.—I am, yours sincerely, SMITHFIELD MARK LXIX