this letter before Noon so as you will receive it this
evening: and can get the Newspaper I tell you of:

"_Eastern Times_ for _Friday_ last sold at Chapman's."

Posh does not remember whether he laid out the three halfpence or not.
But he doubts it. "I knowed as that couldn't ha' nothin' ta dew along o'
us," says he. And he stuck to his guns and proved to be right.

"West" has been mentioned before as being an old fellow with whom
FitzGerald used to navigate the river Deben in a small boat before the
building of the _Scandal_. Newson's wife, like Posh's, was often ailing.
Kind "Fitz" had written previously (July 25th, 1868; _Letters_, Eversley
Edition, p. 106) to Professor Cowell:--

". . . I only left Lowestoft partly to avoid a Volunteer Camp there
which filled the Town and People with Bustle: and partly that my
Captain might see his Wife: who cannot last very much longer I think:
scarcely through the Autumn, surely. She goes about, nurses her
children, etc., but grows visibly thinner, weaker and more ailing."

{The "Happy New Year" yawl, belonging to Posh's beach company: p107.jpg}

The "claim made by your yawl" refers to a claim for salvage made by the
company of beach men (of which Posh was a member) owning a yawl.
FitzGerald (as has been seen before) always took a humorous interest in
the doings of the "sea pirates," yclept beach men or "salwagers," and he
doubtless enjoyed his little chuckle at Posh's expense.

The builders were at work on Little Grange, which FitzGerald predicted he
would never live in but would die in. However, he falsified both
predictions, for he lived in the house ten years and died in Norfolk.

Mr. Durrant was still in default. I doubt if FitzGerald ever got those
flowers. They were plants, Posh tells me, which FitzGerald wished to
plant out at Little Grange.

I can find no record of the principal, the Martinmas or Autumn, fishing
of 1868. But in the spring of 1869 the _Meum and Tuum_ went to the "West
Fishing" for mackerel, even as a large number of our modern steam
drifters go now, to the indignation of the pious fishermen of Penzance,
Newlyn, and St. Ives. These good fellows of the west have, I think, some
reason to complain that it is unfair that they should suffer for
righteousness' sake. Looking at the point in dispute impartially, it
_does_ seem hard that the men of the locality should see Easterlings
bringing in good catches of fish as the re