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him about it at lunch or dinner . . .
    Would Mildred play up? Would the kindly Brockley in her come up trumps? I rather thought so.
    I stood in front of a photograph of Toddington leaving the Old Bailey, and said, ‘Oh, Toddy, we’re in such a mess!’ and then I cried, and then, in the odious way that these things intrude themselves, I began to dramatise the situation and to plan a story about it for The Rattler , and I wrote out the plot, crying all the time, and got into bed at three, and had no sleep till five o’clock.
    In the morning there was a letter by my plate refusing my novel.

6
    In the schoolroom, Agatha Martin was writing to her eldest sister in Cheltenham.
    ‘DEAREST FLOSSIE,
    ‘I have not heard from you for a week, so that makes seven days without a letter.
    ‘I cannot tell you, tho’ you should know, after all this time, how one looks to the post, when one is with new families.
    ‘I think I am settling down very fairly well. Mrs Carne is, I think, a v. nice woman, though a little bit weird! Anyway, she is v. nice to me, they all are. The two elder girls v. wellmannered, on the whole. They both do things. Katrine (eldest) is studying for the stage, but I think it may v. probably be only a hobby, tho’ she is v. pretty in the brunette style, and speaks her parts loudly and clearly. Deirdre is a journalist, as I have told you (?), and really gets taken, and Mrs Carne seems to let her go about to v. weird places alone. I don’t pretend to understand the modern girl. Sheil, my little girl, is a sweet kiddy to look at, but a v . weird child. A kiddy who says whimsical things every now and again I could understand and cope with. (Do you remember Kenneth Barlow who said that “King Henry died of a surfeit of lampshades ,” and how heartily we laughed over it? He meant lampreys !!!) But Sheil isn’t amusing a bit, that way; she talks in such a silly way about things and people, sometimes. It’s perfectly harmless, of course, and I am sure I can get her out of it, in time, but one sometimes can’t make out when she knows she is “making up” and when she believes she is telling the truth. For instance, she told me yesterday that Crellie (their terrier) once thought he was the Pope, and had a procession to the Vatican, and he wore a cope, and just as the service was beginning, he was sick on the altar steps.
    ‘But I shall watch all that. And the only scrap of foundation for the whole thing is that the dog is always vomiting because he will bathe so in the Serpentine, and swallows it. And even the elder girls go on about him, and sort of intone “ In Seculae Seculorum” sometimes when they see him, and call out “magnificats” whenever there is a Tom on the wall, and they say he “talks” with a cockney accent, and sometimes meals are a perfect Beldam (do forgive! I mean Bedlam, of course) of cockney, and of what Crellie “said.” It’s so ridiculous, and not funny, as I said. I love a joke, but this is v. wearing. And the latest seems to be about – of all persons in the world – Mr Justice Toddington; I fancy he was the Judge on the Poisoned Caramels case about three years ago? They are all silly about him, and talk in such a way that I can never make out how much is play and how much serious. They know him in private life, so I expect to meet him any day, now. He is certainly exceedingly generous, and I have often heard them talking amongst themselves of the presents he makes them on birthdays and at Xmas, so I await the next birthday with the greatest curiosity !!
    ‘But my work with the child may be difficult; I shall have to be extra careful to be commonplace , and try to bring her to see that there is plenty of mirth in everyday things – more than in fanciful things which never could possibly happen.
    ‘How is the Pater? And has the Bouverie Society a good summer programme? How excellent Canon Stepney was on “The Gentle Art of Laughter,” last winter! I sent a line from his