I can't get off to Paris just yet, for I am still in bed! Six weeks to-day with one day's interval. I can't shake off this congestion and All the machinery is out of order. Food is a horror. But I won't go in to it. If I can get well enough to go to Paris, it's all I ask. I am fighting for that now… I wish I had got there before this last bout. I was so much stronger than I am now. But this is a bad black month, darling. There is a new moon on the 27th. Look at it and wish. I will look at it and wish for you. I feel so in your mood—listless, tired, my energy flares up and won't last. I'm a wood fire. However, I swear to finish my big story by the end of this month. It's queer when I am in this mood I always write as though I am laughing. I feel it running along the pages. If only the reader could see the snail in its shell with the black pen!

I have just heard from de la Mare about my little family in the Mercury and from America where another story of the same people is coming out in The Dial. I feel like Lottie's and Kezia's mother after the letters I have got this month. It is surprising and very lovely to know how people love little children—the most unexpected people.

Here's the doctor stumping up the stairs.