DEAR MISS POWER,—I hope you won’t think it awful cheek of me to write to you but you were saying the other day that you wondered if it was necessary to get a passport to go to Ireland now. I thought you would like to know that it isn’t. I inquired about it at Cook’s. But I hope you are not going home just yet, for I am sure my aunt can’t spare you. I wish all the same that when you do go I could be there, for Ireland is one of the places I have always wanted to see, and I have always felt that the only decent thing to do is to give them Home Rule and have done with it. A fellow I know in the Air Force who came from Kerry says it is ripping.—I am, yours sincerely, ROY BARRANCE _P.S._—If you are going to Ireland and would send me a wire I would meet you and help you through London. _P.S. 2._—The evening papers are full of more Irish outrages. I don’t think you ought to travel alone. CXVII CLEMENCY POWER TO ROY BARRANCE DEAR MR. BARRANCE,—It was very kind of you to trouble about the passport. I hope not to be leaving Miss Raby until she has really done with me, but my Mother, who lives near Kenmare, is sometimes not very well and I might be sent for and should not like to have to be delayed by red tape. Yes, Kerry is very lovely and I find myself longing for it most of the time. But I doubt if you would care for a country that is so wet. English people are so often disappointed to find only grey mists and rain. For fine weather June is the best month in our parts, but I like it all—grey mists and rain hardly less than the sunshine. Lobbie has been very naughty since you left and goes to bed in the dumps instead of in the highest spirits. I am reading Miss Raby the loveliest Irish book—indade and it’s more than that, it’s a Kerry book—just now, called _Mary of the Winds_, and sometimes I am so homesick I can’t go on at all at all. It’s destroyed I am with the truth of it!—I am, yours sincerely, CLEMENCY POWER CXVIII ROY BARRANCE TO CLEMENCY POWER DEAR MISS POWER,—Please don’t think of me as nothing but English. There’s quite a lot of Irish blood in our family, some way back, and I always feel drawn to the Irish and sorry for them. As for wet weather I love it when I’m prepared for it; and I’ve got a topping Burberry. I got that book you mentioned, _Mary of the Winds_, but it’s a little off my beat. I would give anything to hear you read it, it would be just too lovely, and better than any music. I hope you don’t mind my saying that I think your ordinary voice absolutely top-hole, the most ripping thing I ever listened to. There isn’t any music, not even “You’re here and I’m here,” to touch it. Most people have to sing to be musical, but all you need to do is to talk and it beats a concert hollow. I would love to have it on a gramophone.—I am, yours sincerely,