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said Charles.
    â€˜I suppose you know you’ll fall in love with the Doctor,’ said the Linnet. ‘They all do.’
    â€˜It’s a very humiliating thought,’ I said.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know,’ said the Linnet. ‘I think Knox is rather sweet.’
    â€˜He’s very sweet. But having everything you say written down in a little book and typed out by the secretary afterwards is not my idea of a good love affair.’
    â€˜I see what you mean,’ said the Linnet.
    Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,
    H ENRIETTA
    P.S. My headaches have gone.

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    * Nervo and Knox were a pair of well-known music-hall comedians and members of the immensely popular Crazy Gang.

 
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    September 9, 1942
    M Y D EAR R OBERT
    Every time I see one of those Fuel Target notices in the paper a sort of film comes over my brain, but Charles likes problems, and he spent the whole of what would have been a free hour on Sunday afternoon working out how much coal, gas, coke and electric light we would have to do without this winter.
    After a lot of muttering he laid down his pencil and said: ‘That’s easy. If we shut up the dining room and put one of those stoves in the drawing room we ought to be all right.’
    â€˜Good.’
    â€˜Of course, you must never light the gas fire in your bedroom, or use the electric iron, or the vacuum cleaner, and I’m afraid you’ll have to shut up your studio and bring your work down to the drawing room, and Matins and Evensong must never have more than one burner alight at a time on the gas cooker; otherwise we can go on much as usual.’
    â€˜I see. I thought the Government said that if we saved one lump of coal a day it would be enough.’
    â€˜Did they say that?’ said Charles. ‘They can’t have meant it.’
    Charles now calls himself Herr Fuel Obermeister, and has developed the irritating habit of poking his head round the door of any room where I happen to be sitting and switching off the light, leaving me in darkness. He says that if we hit our Fuel Target he would like to be called Herr
Von
Fuel Obermeister.
    I have become a sort of unofficial Fire-Watcher. I can’t be a proper one because, if Charles is out, there is nobody to answer the telephone, but I have got a tin hat, and awhistle with which to communicate with the Fire-Watchers proper in the road below, and I walk about on the flat roof outside my bedroom.
    I was out there a few nights ago, admiring the moon on the sea and thinking that the hum of aeroplanes is quite the most disagreeable sound in the world, when I heard feet crunching on the gravel below. ‘Who’s there?’ I said in a loud whisper, leaning over the parapet.
    â€˜It’s Lady B,’ said a voice out of the shadows. ‘Can I come up?’
    â€˜Wait a minute and I’ll come down and open the door.’
    â€˜Can’t I come up the ladder?’
    â€˜Well, if you really want to——’
    â€˜Of course I want to,’ said Lady B, and a minute later she was stepping nimbly over the parapet and onto the roof. By the light of the moon I could see she was wearing a neat siren suit and a tin hat.

    She was stepping nimbly over the parapet
    â€˜How nice you look,’ I said.
    â€˜Nonsense, Henrietta!’ said Lady B. ‘An old woman of my age!’ But I could hear she was pleased.
    I got her another camp stool and we both sat down. ‘If Winston can, then I can,’ said Lady B.
    â€˜Can what?’
    â€˜Wear a siren suit.’
    We sat in silence for a time, listening to the hum of aeroplanes overhead. Then I said: ‘We used to have such fun on this roof once upon a time.’
    â€˜And so you will again,’ said Lady B.
    â€˜All those boys and girls, so jolly, lying about in the sun enjoying themselves, and now——’ I gulped, and Lady B put her hand on mine and gave it a little