This is my little moment of quiet before I am thrown to the Three Bears again. (Fancy Southey being the author of the Three Bears!) I am in bed. It's ten o'clock. The post hasn't come, but at break of day the Aged brought me your telegram, a particularly nice one, and so with that smiling on my knee I feel almost as though I'd had a letter…. It's a blue and white day, very fair and warm and calm. The sort of day that fowls enjoy, keeping up a soft faraway cackle—you know the kind? Were I alone I should dive into my new story. It's so plain before me. page 145 But I don't dare to. They'd see me, they'd look over the fence and call. No, darling new story, you'll have to wait till Friday night.

Poor old Carpentrassienne! If she knew how she offends me—how the sight of her binding up her balloon-like bosom preparatory to “la fête de la soupe” makes me frissonne! If she mentions another book that she's going to make me eat when I go and stay with her, I think I may—fly into bits! And this French language! Well, of course, she always did caricature it, but in my clean, pink Elizabethan ears it sounds the most absolute drivel! And poor old L. M.'s contributions! “En anglais mange les poudings c'est très bien.”

Hours and hours and hours of it! Are you wondering where Wig has left her sense of humour? Oh, my sense of humour won't take his head from between his paws for it—won't wag his tail or twirk an ear.

It's a comfort that the cold has gone again pour le moment. I hope it has in London, too. Here to-day it feels very quick March indeed. We shall have to send our telegrams all the same, you know. The man at Havre said: “Of course, if you have urgent family affairs which recall you to England before the time is up, it can doubtless be arranged.” I think he meant that I should do wisely to have evidence—like a telegram. So, unless you think the How is Mother telegram with its answer, ‘Mother is worse operation necessary come soon possible,’ too extreme, that will be the one we shall send. I'll be most awfully frightened till I am on English shore. And even then it will be no good for you to attempt to meet me because the trains are hours late—or perhaps nearly a day late, and we'd both suffer too cruelly. You know what I'd feel like thinking you were waiting and I couldn't get out and push the engine. No, I'll have to (a) phone you at the office, (b) go home by taxi if it's not office hours. Voilà!

My poetry book opened this morning upon “The Wish” by old Father Abraham Cowley.

page 146

Ah, yet, ere I descend into the grave,
May I a small house and large garden have,
And a few friends and many books, both true,
Both wise and both delightful, too!

Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetched metaphors appear;
Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter
And nought but Echo flatter.
The gods, when they descended, hither
From heaven did always choose their way:
And therefore we may boldly say
That 'tis the way, too, thither.

This gaiety is the result of absolute desperation. I've such a headache that everything pounds, even the flowers I look at, everything beats and drums. I feel absolutely bled white and it still goes on till to-morrow evening 8 p.m. Insufferable monsters! They have just snapped up a whole half-pound of biscuits (2 francs) bought by L. M. for me (I said a quarter!) In consequence, I never touched one, and watched them dip the half-pound in their tea—“les sucreries de la guerre épouvantable.” My knees tremble, and where my little belly was there is only a cave. If they were not going to-morrow, I'd leave, myself, with a hand-bag. Or die and have L. M. plus the G.'s at my pompes funèbres. “C'était une femme tellement douce!!!” No, madness lies this way. I'll stop and try to get calm. Oh God! these monsters!!

On Saturday D.V. after a whole day alone I will be again at least a gasping Wig—not a Wig in utter despair. Damn People!