nd.

April 18th.

Dear Ginger,--What's the use? What is the use? I do all I can to get
right away from New York, and New York comes after me and tracks me down
in my hiding-place. A week or so ago, as I was walking down the Strand
in an aimless sort of way, out there came right on top of me--who do you
think? Fillmore, arm in arm with Mr. Carmyle! I couldn't dodge. In the
first place, Mr. Carmyle had seen me; in the second place, it is a day's
journey to dodge poor dear Fillmore now. I blushed for him. Ginger!
Right there in the Strand I blushed for him. In my worst dreams I had
never pictured him so enormous. Upon what meat doth this our Fillmore
feed that he is grown so great? Poor Gladys! When she looks at him she
must feel like a bigamist.

Apparently Fillmore is still full of big schemes, for he talked airily
about buying all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as I suppose
you know, to arrange about putting on "The Primrose Way" over here. He
is staying at the Savoy, and they took me off there to lunch, whooping
joyfully as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing that could
possibly have happened to me. Fillmore talked Broadway without a pause,
till by the time he had worked his way past the French pastry and was
lolling back, breathing a little stertorously, waiting for the coffee
and liqueurs, he had got me so homesick that, if it hadn't been that I
didn't want to make a public exhibition of myself, I should have broken
down and howled. It was crazy of me ever to go near the Savoy. Of
course, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were Americans at every
table as far as the eye could reach. I might just as well have been at
the Astor.

Well, if Fate insists in bringing New York to England for my special
discomfiture, I suppose I have got to put up with it. I just let events
take their course, and I have been drifting ever since. Two days ago
I drifted here. Mr. Carmyle invited Fillmore--he seems to love
Fillmore--and me to Monk's Crofton, and I hadn't even the shadow of an
excuse for refusing. So I came, and I am now sitting writing to you in
an enormous bedroom with an open fire and armchairs and every other sort
of luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He sails for New York on Saturday on
the Mauretania. I am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to all
his other big schemes, he is now promoting a fight for the light-weight
championship in Jersey City, and guaranteeing enormous sums to bot