r going to get one, and she, full of the dignity and wisdom of the
married, will be giving me much sage counsel with sobriety and
gentleness, when something starts her off about Deutschland. Oh, they
are _intolerable_ about their Deutschland!

The Oberforster is calling for this--he's driving to the post, so
good-bye little darling mother, little beloved and precious one.

Your Chris.

_Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914_.

My blessed mother,

Here's Thursday evening in my week of nothing to do, and me meaning to
write every day to you, and I haven't done it since Monday. It's
because I've had so much time. Really it's because I've been in a sort
of sleep of loveliness. I've been doing nothing except be happy. Not
a soul has been near us since Sunday, and Frau Bornsted says not a soul
will, till next Sunday. Each morning I've come down to a perfect
world, with the sun shining through roses on to our breakfast-table in
the porch, and after breakfast I've crossed the road and gone into the
forest and not come back till late afternoon.

Frau Bornsted has been sweet about it, giving me a little parcel of
food and sending me off with many good wishes for a happy day. I
wanted to help her do her housework, but except my room she won't let
me, having had orders from Kloster that I was to be completely idle.
And it _is_ doing me good. I feel so perfectly content these last
three days. There's nothing fretful about me any more; I feel
harmonized, as if I were so much a part of the light and the air and
the forest that I don't know now where they leave off and I begin. I
sit and watch the fine-weather clouds drifting slowly across the
tree-tops, and wonder if heaven is any better. I go down to the edge
of the Haff, and lie on my face in the long grass, and push up my
sleeves, and slowly stir the shallow golden water about among the
rushes. I pick wild strawberries to eat with my lunch, and after lunch
I lie on the moss and learn the Psalm for the day, first in English and
then in German. About five I begin to go home, walking slowly through
the hot scents of the afternoon forest, feeling as solemn and as
exulting as I suppose a Catholic does when he comes away, shriven and
blest, from confession. In the evening we sit out, and the little
garden grows every minute more enchanted. Frau Bornsted rests after
her labours, with her hands in her lap, and agrees with what the
Oberforster every now and