llowed to row you down to
tell Mrs. Prettyman about the chair. I feel as if, like the Japanese,
I could journey a hundred miles to worship that wonderful tree.--Don't
let the blossoms fall until I come!

"There seems a good deal of business to be done. My father unfortunately
is no better, so he cannot come down to Stoke Revel, and I shall
probably return upon Wednesday morning. A poem of Browning's runs in my
head--something about three days--I can't quote exactly.

"If my sister were writing this letter, she would say that I have been
very hard to please, and uninterested in everything since I came home.
Indeed it seems as if I were. London in this part of it, in hot
weather, makes a man weary for green woods, a sliding river, and a
Book of Verses underneath a Bough. Well, perhaps I shall have all of
them by Wednesday afternoon. You will think I can do nothing but
grumble. All the same, into what was the mere dull routine of
uncongenial work before, your influence has come with a current of new
energy; like the tide from the sea swelling up into the inland
river.--I'm at it again! Rivers on the brain evidently.

"I hope meanwhile that Carnaby behaves himself, and is not too much of
a bore, and that England,--England in spring at least, is gaining a
corner in your heart? Your mother called it home, remember. Yes, do
try to remember that!

"Did you go to the garden party? Did you walk? Did you drive? Did you
like it? Who was there? Were you dull?"

* * * * *

There was a postscript:--

"I have found the verse from Browning, 'So I shall see her in three
days.'

"M. L."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, 19th.

"Dear Mr. Lavendar: First, many thanks for Nurse's armchair, which
arrived in perfect order, and is a shining monument to your good
taste. She does nothing but look at it, shrouding it when she retires
to bed with an old table-cover, to protect it from the night air.

"Whether she will ever make its acquaintance thoroughly enough to sit
in it I do not know, but it will give her an enormous amount of
pleasure. Perhaps her glow of pride in its possession does her as much
good as the comfort she might take in its use.

"Her 'rheumatics' are very painful just now, and I have a good deal to
do with Duckie. You remember