His other letter was much longer, and had evidently been written straight
off without the elaborate care that he had given to the composition of
the first one. As Babs read it, she pictured him sitting as he always did,
perched on a high chair at the writing-table, with his legs curled under
him and his nose very close to the paper; and suddenly, the deadly
feeling of home-sickness she had been battling with for days came over
her again.

'This is the true account,' she read, through a suspicious mist in her
eyes, 'of how Jill ragged the doctor, when he came to dine with us,
the day after the boys went back. Of course, Auntie Anna didn't know he
was a beast, so she couldn't be blamed for asking him; but Jill and I much
regretted the circumstance. Robin grumbled and said he wished he was old
enough to sit up to dinner and have courses and courses and courses,
but that's his beastly greediness, as I pointed out to him, and he
doesn't know what it is to get a white tie under a filthy clean
collar and then an Eton coat under that and to wash your teeth extra
instead of only in the morning. But Jill came in and tied it, which was
something, and she even did it better than Nurse, who used to make you
feel sick by grinding her knuckles into your throat all the time. Having
prepared ourselves for the awful holocaust we then proceeded downstairs.
(Perhaps you won't be able to understand all the words in this letter, but
it's too good a joke to be spoilt by making it easy for you, so you
must do your best.) Jill had an awfully decent pink sort of thing on, and
it had rows of fringe that you could tie into knots without her rotting
you for doing it. Well, to come to the real matter of my discourse, we
found the doctor in the drawing-room, also the old Rector, who is called
Barnaby and is too old to count much, and besides Auntie Anna likes him
so we mean to extend to him the charm of our companionship. And the
Rector took in Auntie Anna, and the Beast took in Jill, and I followed
behind feeling rotten. You don't know how rotten it is, when you are
an odd one like that and nobody wants you in their conversation. You
see there were two conversations all the time, Auntie's conversation
with the old boy about tithes and rent charges and things that are
not suited to my intellect, and Jill's conversation with the doctor
which wasn't a conversation at all because he wouldn't talk. He sat and
glowered at his plate like a cat would, and