With loving thoughts, in which Letitia would, I am sure, join me, were she not out purchasing our necessarily frugal dinner,—I am, your affectionate brother-in-law, SEPTIMUS TRIBE X RICHARD HAVEN TO NESTA ROSSITER DEAR NESTA, how odd things are! Here have you been my honorary niece for years and years, and we have hardly exchanged a word, and now, all owing to a piece of slippery ice, I am reeling out correspondence. But how wrong that it should have needed such a lamentable form of provocation! You must think of me now as in constant consultation with card-sharpers and carpenters, with a view to solving the great Solitaire-board problem. If it comes out, thousands of invalids, and a few lazy folk into the bargain, will bless the names of Raby and Rossiter, not altogether, I hope, forgetting that of Haven; for all of us at times have wished for the possibility of playing card games while reclining in comfort on a sofa. There is a thing called a card index, the maintaining of which seems to have been the principal task of the female war-winners in the various Government Departments, and it is upon the same principle (as you have already suggested) that our vertical or sloping Solitaire table must be made. Meanwhile tell me if you have one of those invalid tables that come from Bond Street and can be insinuated into the patient’s zone with such ease. If not I shall send you one. I ran into one of your kith and kin, Horace Mun-Brown, to-day and told him the news, so Verena may expect trouble. I had told him before I realized what a bloomer I was committing. But that is life! The always wise communicate no news.—Yours, R. H. _P.S._—You, as a parent, will like the small schoolboy’s letter home which one of the evening papers quotes to-day:— MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,—Do you know that salt is made of two deadly poisons?—Your loving son, JOHN XI ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER DEAREST MUMMIE,—I hope you are quite well. I have a cold. Daddy tells me to tell you that if you don’t come home soon he will take another lady in wholly wedlock. So please come soon because we have decided we couldn’t endure her. I send you a thousand kisses.—Your loving TONY x x x x x x x x XII NESTA ROSSITER TO RICHARD HAVEN