’Good-bye, darling, don’t forget that whatever the next few months may bring you, "underneath are the Everlasting Arms."’
Daddy is such a comfortable person, he doesn’t, like Aunt Amelia, jaw about the war and say it’s ’a judgment’ _every_ time he writes. When it first broke out he said that God seemed to be speaking to the world with great vigour about something, and was I listening for the bit He meant for me?
Really, when you come to think of it, arms are nice things when one is tired. War makes one tired, all women hate it. I wish Michael wasn’t in France. I wish he could have seen his way to take the staff job he was offered.
I have had such a glorious sleep! The gardener’s cat wasn’t in it, but the earwig was—in my bed—and Nannie wouldn’t let me kill it because ’earwigs are such good mothers.’
Oh, what bliss a bed is after a bunk, the joy of a motor hoot instead of a fog horn, and the sight of a house opposite one’s windows instead of a sickening swirl of green water and sky.
But I felt rather at a loose end, and when Nannie came in with my breakfast I said,—
’Buy a hat, I should think, dearie, and then go to the Bank.’
She sat on the edge of my bed while the Poppet and I had breakfast. I believe her private opinion is that Michael has kept us short of food, as we ate everything but the crockery, but when a person has lived on a dry biscuit for weeks, a person is apt to feel a bit peckish at the end of such a fast.
Dear old Nannie hasn’t altered much, she carries her years lightly, it’s just the same kind face, with the hair a little grayer. She says she would have come out to India to me ages ago if it hadn’t been for the war. We had so much to say to one another that I got rid of quite a respectable amount of the conversation which had accumulated during the voyage, for I was too sick even to talk!
It is good to be in London. I went to my old shop. ’Estelle’ remembered me and said, ’Madame is of a youthfulness inconceivable to have such a big little daughter,’ which is most satisfactory. The ’big little daughter’ looks enchanting in a white fur cap to match her coat, and I got a small soft brown thing ’of a price preposterous.’ Captain Everard called to inquire after me, so I asked him to lunch and thanked him for all he had done for me. He said he hardly recognised me in a vertical position, having seen me prostrate so long. After lunch I spent the afternoon with Ross. He said he was ’quite well.’