DEAR ROY,—Aunt Verena asks me to say that she will be delighted if you will come for a few days next week, but she warns you that you will find things very slow here. We are a small party, the liveliest of us being my little Lobbie, whom I don’t think you have seen. As she is now six, this shows that you have neglected your kith and kin. If you care for fishing you had better bring your rod, as the Arrow is not far off. And I wish you would go to that shop in the Haymarket just above the Haymarket Theatre and get one of those glass coffee machines—medium size. I should also like a biggish box of Plasticine for Lobbie.—Your affectionate cousin, NESTA C VERENA RABY TO NICHOLAS DEVOSE DEAR,—I have thought much since your last letter and more still since the telegram came. Please do not come yet. I could not bear it. Old as the rest of me has become, all that appertains to you is preserved, as though in some heart-cell apart, and as fresh as yesterday. I am not equal to the emotion of seeing you just yet, nor am I sure that I want to. The you that I know is no longer the you that others see—he is young and ambitious and often masterful and yet with such strange fits of misgiving. But I should love to have a portfolio of your sketches, if you could trust them to the railway. Choose those that you think the best or that you made under the happiest conditions. No, let there be one or two when you were least happy. Are you grey? I am. SERENA CI RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY MY DEAR, I hope that this heat isn’t too much for you, but perhaps your circumambient heights promote a breeze. London has been stifling. The War has certainly broken down many of our old conventions. Who, even in the hottest summer, ever before saw bathing in the Trafalgar Square fountains? Or stark naked boys careering round Gordon’s statue. But I saw them to-day—a score of them—with a policeman after them; for against bathing there is a law to break, apparently. The constable did not run, he merely advanced; but they scampered before him, all gleaming in the evening sun, dragging their scanty clothes behind them, and those who were leading paused now and then to get a leg into their trousers, hesitated, failed, and were away again. It is astonishing how little space can intervene between what appears to be a sauntering policeman and a naked fleeing boy. This constable was like Fate.