I was just brushing my fringe when I heard a clumpetyclump in the passage that my heart seemed to recognise long before I did. It began to dance and beat. Yes, it was the Aged with your Adorable telegram:

“Sthry recewid mafnifiient Murly,” I read, and of course this bowled me over so much that the pins won't keep in my hair and my buttons pop like fuchsia buds and my strings all squeak when they are pulled. Well, the page 126 only response I can make is to send you the next chapter which I'll post, as before, on Monday. But oh dear, oh dear! you have lighted such a candle! Great beams will come out of my eyes at lunch and play like searchlights over the pommes de terre and terrify these insect children.

Now, of course, my only faint fear is: “Will he like the next chapter so much?” Well, I must ‘wait and see.’ I must say when I wrote about the tea ¹ last night—that's a funny little typical bit—I came all over and nearly cried a sort of sweet tears…. I say, haven't I got a bit of you? Funny thing is I think you'll always come walking into my stories…. No, I must wait until I've had lunch before I go on with this letter. I am too much of a ‘gash balloon’ altogether.

1.15. Well, I wish you had eaten my tournedos; it was such a good'un. The great thing here is the meat, which is superb. Oh, but now I am turned towards home everything is good…. Shall we really next month talk with Rib sitting in the fender playing on a minute comb and paper?

How damned depressing and hideously inadequate that Versailles conference has been! But what I do feel is—that handful can't stop the dyke from breaking now (is that true?). I mean, there is—isn't there?—perfectly immense pressure upon it, and L.G. and Co. may put their hands in the hole (like the little boy in Great Deeds Done by Little People that Grandma used to read me on Sundays) but it's no use. Oh, I don't know. When I think that I am not coming home and that ‘all is over’—when that mood gets me, of course I don't believe it ever will end until we are all killed as surely as if we were in the trenches….