at
bore.

Annie, the maid at my lodgings, handed me a bunch of mail. Mr. Belloc
was particularly eager to see me, he said. He gave me an intimate two
page account of his movements for the past couple of weeks or so. He
had just been out to sea in his boat, the _Nona_, and had only got back
after a good deal of difficulty outside; this he hoped would account
for the delay of a day or so in his reply.

During the Whitsun days he had to travel about England to see his
children at their various schools, and after that he had to go to
settle again about his boat, where she lay in a Welsh port. Then he
must speak at Eton. He would be "available," however, at the beginning
of the next week, when he hoped I would "take a meal" with him.
Perhaps he could be of some use in acquainting me with England; it
would be such a pleasure to meet me, and so on. Very nice attitude for
a man so slightly acquainted with one.

Mr. Chesterton wished to thank me for my letter and to say that he
would be pleased if I cared to come down to spend an afternoon with him
at Beaconsfield. Mr. Walpole apologised very greatly for seeming so
curtly inhospitable, but he was only in London for a short time and had
difficulty in squeezing his engagements in. This week, too, was
infernally complicated by Ascot. But couldn't I come round on Monday
to lunch with him at his club?

Mr. Chesterton is a grand man. Smokes excellent cigars. But first, as
you come up the hill, from the railway station toward the old part of
the village and to the little house Overroads, you enter, as like as
not, as I did, a gate set in a pleasant hedge, and you knock at a side
door, to the mirth later of Mrs. Chesterton.

This agreeable entrance is that for tradesmen. The way you should have
gone in is round somewhere on another road. A maid admits you to a
small parlour and in a moment Mrs. Chesterton comes in to inquire if
you have an appointment with her husband. She always speaks of Mr.
Chesterton as "my husband." It develops that the letter you sent
fixing the appointment got balled up in some way. It further develops
that a good many things connected with Mr. Chesterton's life and house
get balled up. Mrs. Chesterton's line seems to be to keep things about
a chaotic husband as straight as possible.

Mr. Chesterton is a very fat man. His portraits, I think, hardly do
him sufficient honour in this respect. He has a remarkably red face.
And a smallish mo