on the envelope. I'll
write and tell you directly I get there. Don't worry about me, little
mother; Kloster says they are fearfully kind people, and it's the
healthiest place, in the heart of the forest, away on the edge of a
thing they call the Haff, which is water. He says that in a week I
shall be leaping about like a young roe on the hill side; and he tries
to lash me to enthusiasm by talking of all the wild strawberries there
are there, and all the cream.

My heart's love, darling mother.
Your confused and rather hustled Chris.

_Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914_.

My own little mother,

Here I am, and it is lovely. I must just tell you about it before I go
to bed. We're buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station,
and that's only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small
train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three
hours from Stettin. The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage,
drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn't been worried with much drill
judging from their individualistic behaviour, and we lurched over
forest tracks that were sometimes deep sand and sometimes all roots,
and the evening air was so delicious after the train, so full of
different scents and freshness, that I did nothing but lift up my nose
and sniff with joy.

The Oberforster thought I had a cold, without at the same time having a
handkerchief; and presently, after a period of uneasiness on my behalf,
offered me his. "It is not quite clean," he said, "but it is better
than none." And he shouted, because I was a foreigner and therefore
would understand better if he shouted.

I explained as well as I could, which was not very, that my sniffs were
sniffs of exultation.

"_Ach so_," he said, indulgent with the indulgence one feels towards a
newly arrived guest, before one knows what they are really like.

We drove on in silence after that. Our wheels made hardly any noise on
the sandy track, and I suddenly discovered how long it is since I've
heard any birds. I wish you had come with me here, little mother; I
wish you had been on that drive this evening. There were jays, and
magpies, and woodpeckers, and little tiny birds like finches that kept
on repeating in a monotonous sweet pipe the opening bar of the
Beethoven C minor Symphony No. 5. We met nobody the whole way except a
man with a cartload of wood, who greeted the Oberforster with immense