I hope you are enjoying a different kind of weather from our mountain variety. It is as cold as late autumn, very, very damp, with heavy mists. We are wearing full winter outfit and going to bed under our travelling rugs, with large size Swiss hot water tins. Summer seems to have spent its fortune at one fell swoop. You know that type of wind, like a draught, which plays on the back of one's neck and seems to come from all quarters equally; it is in its element at present. However, being the month of June, we can still hope that any day may see a complete change.

I envy you your voyage in the “Aquitania.” It must be a most interesting experience to travel in one of those huge liners—very different to the good old “Star of New Zealand.” Still, I have a very soft corner in my heart for the “Niwaru,” for example. Do you remember how Mother used to enjoy the triangular shaped pieces of toast for tea? Awfully good they were, too, on a cold afternoon in the vicinity of The Horn. How I should love to make a long sea voyage again one of these days. But I always connect such experiences with a vision of Mother in her little seal skin jacket with the collar turned up. I can see her as I write.

It is a great pity J. is so wicked about her food. If she lived abroad for a time, she would realise that it is only in England that very thin ladies are the fashion (as Grandma B. would have said). I have grown foreign enough to confess that I infinitely prefer the French taste in such matters. One sees beautiful women in Paris and all their beauty is crowned by their look of radiant health; lovely arms and throats and shoulders—not bony ones. When page 223 I burst out of all my skirts in Paris the little dressmaker who had to make 'em bigger rolled up her eyes and said, “Dieu soit loué.” That is a much better spirit than the English one.