I sent that wire yesterday, but when the Mayor asked to translate “Hay for Heron” ¹ I was rather up a tree! So I said, “tout va très très bien.” That was true, wasn't it? But if the wire is stopped, what a roundabout I and the censor would sit in before I explained!

It is so Bitterly Cold to-day that no amount of clothes, food or fire can stop spider-webs of ice flying all over one's skin. Juliette says I am like a little cat, and I feel like one, because I am always by my own fire or, as I go along the corridor, purring round any stove that is lighted there. And there was “pas de poste aujourd'hui.” I didn't really expect any letters. Look here! Did you know you sent me 2 copies of Master Humphrey's Clock? It was in the back of Edwin Drood as well as in the separate volume. I thought I'd just tell you.

What an old wind-bag G. K. C. is! His preface to the Everyman book is simply disgraceful.

I must talk a bit about the Heron. We must find a place where it is warm and at the same time bracing, i.e., abrité and yet rather high. But, to be absolutely frank, I am beginning to change my mind about this place for the winter. I won't come here again. If it is calm, it is perfect, but there is nearly always “un pue de vent” and that “vent” is like an iced knife. One would be much snugger in a thoroughly snug cottage with doors and windows that fit, a good fire, etc. And I don't want to have two homes. No one can. If we have the money and the desire we shall always be able to cut off together for a bit irgendwohin. But one home, with all the books, all the flowers, is enough and can't be beat.

If I talk about my own physical health—well, I know I ought to be in the air a lot. Well, if we have a garden, that's what I call being decently in the air, to plant things and dig up things, not to hang pegged on a clothes line and be blown about like a forlorn pantalon. Also, I want to range about with you, But Always with our own cottage to come back to and its thread of smoke to see from far away. ¹ That's life, that's the warm south, wherever it is.

My God! how we shall talk when I get back, planning all this and saying, “Yes, I think so, too.”

I don't think I can wait much longer for a garden—for fruit trees and vegetables. The thought of knocking lumps of earth off a freshly pulled carrot fills me with emotion; “je suis tout émue,” as these crawly froggies say, at the idea. Another—plums with the bloom on them, in a basket—and you and I making jam—and your Mother coming to stay with us—and—and—everything.

I've begun my new story. It's nice.