as we
have had!

You ought to have a fire lighted at such a season at 8 o'clock so
as to warm and dry the room, and all in it, nearly every
evening--and whenever the room seems damp, have a fire just
lighted to go out when it will. It's not wholesome to sleep in
heated rooms, but they must be dry. A _bed_ slept in every night
keeps so, if the room is not damp; but the room must not be damp,
and when it is unoccupied for two or three days it is sure to get
so.

_Be sure_ that there is a good fire in it all day, and all your
bed things, _mattress and all_, kept well before it for at _least_
a _whole day before you go back from Uncle Henry's_.

How was it your bed-maker had not your room well warmed and dried,
mattress dry, etc., before you went up this time? She ought to
have had, and should be spoken to about it--_i.e._ unless you told
her not to! in which case it would be very like having no
breakfast!

It has been a horrid interruption in the beginning of term--and
you'll have difficulty with the loss of time. Besides which I
have no doubt you have been very uncomfortable.

But I don't understand why you should have "nothing to write
about" because you have been in bed. Surely you must have
accumulated all sorts of reflective and imaginative stories there.

It is most kind of Aunt Nora and Uncle Henry--give my love and
thanks to both.

I grieve to say that many many more fish are found dead since the
thaw melted the banks of swept snow off the sides of the ice. It
is most piteous; the poor things seem to have come to the edge
where the water is shallowest--there is a shoal where we generally
feed the swans.

I am happy to say the goldfish seem all alive and merry. The
continual dropping of fresh water has no doubt saved them--they
were never hermetically sealed in like the other poor things.

Yesterday I was at Ringwould, near Dover. The farmers had been up
all night saving their cattle in the stalls from the sudden
floods.

Here we have not had any, though the earth is washed very much
from the hills in streaks.

We are--at least I am--dreadfully sorry to go to London--though
the house is very dull without "the boys."

All right about the books.--Ever your lovi