er thing. Don't forget that the ship's master is a greater
man than a colonel. You know colonels, don't you? (All right, all right!)
Well, make no mistake about it, master mariners, as a rule, are different.
It is long odds that your new master will know his job. If you are nice to
him, he may even confess to a taste for your poetry; ships' masters are
like pie, I have found, to little lost children like ourselves who know
nothing about ships, but they are perfectly frightful towards those
who know all about ships, and know it all wrong.

A happy Christmas and a lucky New Year.

Yours ever,
H. M. TOMLINSON.

I

On the eleventh of January my uncertainty was ended by the apparition (and
in the village of Staizley it is no less) of a girl with a telegram. Her
walk of three miles or thereabouts, from our nearest telegraph office,
brought her to my gate at three in the afternoon; and with her customary
awed speechlessness she gave me her message. It was from "Kingfisher," the
decoded entity of which was the great shipping owner to whom I owed my
arrangements; and in response I hastily attempted to leave a semblance
of order behind me and to seem unexcited. My luggage, no cumbrous
affair, had already been packed. By six, the trap of an ingenious
neighbour, who lives by all sorts of traps, was heard at the gate, and
Mary and myself got in. Determined protest, not at my departure, but
at the apparent departure of her mother, was now raised by the youngest
among us. My comforting promises were ignored, and the infant's cries
redoubled. Nevertheless, off we went.

The evening had been pouring out, with the vigour of an elemental
Whistler, sleet and hail, and now though the wind was down our drive
lay through fields half whitened with the storm; and the air was livid
with the clouded moon and as cold as the ebbing light. With its multitude
of pollards, its desolate great fields, its chilling breaths, the
countryside might have been Flanders. This aspect seemed incidentally
to demonstrate the wisdom of going elsewhere for a month or two.

We now came into Slowe, discussing all the time our past, present and
future; the chief result of the discussion was the placing of my
unanswered letters at Mary's disposal. The town of Slowe was at peace.
Its station wore the familiar air of having nothing to do with the coarse
noise of