began to read.

CHAPTER III

A LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH

Dear Bill,--At last I find myself with an hour or so to spare, so here
goes! How are you all? Well, I hope. I received your little present on
the anniversary. Many thanks, old girl. How on earth do you remember the
date of everybody's birthday? Honestly, I should have let it pass
without noticing if that wee book had not arrived two days before. So
you see, you _are_ of some use in the world after all! (This is a joke.)
How's Mac getting on with the etching? Tell him I've taken to using only
forty per cent. nitric acid in distilled water. This gives very good
results for all ordinary work, much more certain than the nitrous, and
doesn't make such a stink. There's no demand just now for modern work,
in England at any rate. I can hardly believe what you say about the
shows in New York. London's dead for etchers. Every dealer is clamorous
for copies of the old masters. The rotten thing is that it pays better
than doing original work, you know. I have a job on now--twenty plates
at L50 a plate, simply copying Girtins and Bartolozzis. I shall do four
plates a year. I take things pretty easily, work in the morning, potter
round the garden in the afternoon, tennis and cycling when the weather
permits. This has been a terrible summer. English weather gets worse, I
believe. We had rain for a solid week in July. I was out on a tramp
through the midlands and got caught in it, which reminds me of a most
remarkable chap I met at the time. I really must tell you about him,
because I don't remember anyone who has so impressed his _personality_
upon me as this man did.

"It was this way. I had been sketching round about Market Overton, and
getting rather sick of the incessant rain, so I packed up my knapsack
and started home. It really is much more jolly walking in the rain than
sitting in a stuffy inn parlour waiting for it to stop. Well, at
Peterboro' I heard the country eastward was flooded and farmers ruined.
Of course, my road lay through March and Ely to Newmarket and
Colchester, and I wouldn't believe the boys who called to me that I'd be
stopped; but sure enough, not two miles east of Peterboro' the road slid
under water and people were punting themselves about on doors, and
cooking their grub upstairs. In the fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks
were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache
for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of cours