DEAR “UNCLE” RICHARD,—Aunt Verena asks me to tell you that the specialist is very hopeful that she may be quite as strong and active as ever, but it will be a long business. Injuries to the spine are, however, very dangerous things, and there can be no certainty yet. Directly she can, she is going to write to you with her own hand. You are to be the first. Meanwhile she says that your daily letters are a great joy, but you must not hesitate to break the custom if it is ever at all troublesome.—Yours sincerely, NESTA XIII RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY [_Telegram_] Three and thirty cheers for the specialist. R. H. XIV HAZEL BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY DEAREST AUNT VERENA,—I hope you are really better, or—if that is too much to hope yet—that you are going on all right. As soon as the Doctor says so, I am coming to peep at you. We are living in a state of great excitement because Mother’s old friend Mrs. Blundry is here for a few days and she talks of nothing but spiritualism. You know she lost her son Savile in the War—or, to use her own word, she “gave” him—and every night she gets out the paraphernalia of communication and has conversations with him. I used to think of death with terror—and indeed I do now, of my own—but the late Savile Blundry is transforming us all into frivolous heartless creatures! From his mother’s report of what he says, the grave has taught him nothing, and most of his remarks are only to the effect that it’s “jolly decent over there.” Father is furious about it all and says that the duty of the dead is to be dead: but of course he can’t be brutal like that to Mrs. Blundry. The fact, however, remains that she sees far more of her Savile now than she ever did when he was alive. Of course, if talking to the boy, or thinking she does so, brings any comfort, one should be glad of it—and there seem to be lots of people getting such comfort, or groping after such comfort, all over the world—but really, dead people do seem to have so little to say. When it comes to that, so do live people.