You know, my sweet, that part of a man’s job is to look after his woman, and I can’t feel that we should be playing the game to go off like this. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that your father knows what he is saying and that we ought to wait. After all, impossible though they are, fathers have got some kind of right to put their damned old trotters down now and then, and especially when one is still eating from their hands. Besides, I don’t know from day to day what I am going to do—the whole force is in such a muddle with Winston tinkering at it—and it wouldn’t be playing the game to marry now. Three years isn’t such a terrible long time and I may be an Air-Marshal by then, who knows? After all, we must live, and I haven’t got a bean beyond my rotten pay, and if your father turns us down, where are we? Echo answers where. Especially as my people have always set their hearts on my marrying that red-headed horror I showed you in the distance at the Russian Ballet. No, my angel darling sphinx, the sweetest thing ever made or dreamt of, let us be sensible, much as it goes against the grain, and wait. I’ve got my eye on an absolutely topping engagement ring in Regent Street, which shall be yours in a fortnight from to-day and we’ll have the most gorgeous fun.—Your grovelling lover, VIN. LXXIX CLEMENCY POWER TO THE HON. MRS. POWER DEAR MOTHER,—Things go along very comfortably here, so comfortably that I have a guilty feeling that I am not earning my salary at all, but spending a happy visit. I now have a weekly journey to Hereford to do any extra shopping that may be needed. I go in a car in state in the morning and have lunch at the Green Dragon while the things are being packed up. We are now reading nothing but the _Times_ and Thackeray. Having just finished _Esmond_ we are beginning _The Virginians_. Miss Raby’s father used to read it to them all and she says it brings old times back: but I should prefer a change now and then. I find that I can manage reading aloud now with much less fatigue. Don’t you think girls at school ought to be trained in it? Did I tell you that my employer, Mr. Haven, had a wonderful Solitaire board made on which Miss Raby can play while lying at full length on her back? The cards have holes in them at the top, and are hung on instead of being laid down, as on a table. She is able to sit up better now and can use a table, but she keeps this for times when she is tired. Don’t you think it is the very thing for Grannie? I think I shall get one made and send it to her.