She has a cat called "Didums poor little kitty wee, then"; you put the accent on the "then," and spread it out as long as you can. Well, Didums, etc., goes about eating moths; a curious diet for a cat, but I believe it keeps them thin. He swallowed them whole, you know, and Hilda told him how cruel it was. She seems to have spoken of the sufferings of the imprisoned ones in the most moving terms. Anyhow she found Didums next day up in her bedroom remorsefully eating a sealskin coat.
I am surprised at Hilda. If she is not careful her baby will grow up a journalist. I have seen him since he came back from you. This time I approached from the west, and I noticed a great difference. He is certainly a fine child, and as he let me put him to sleep I love him. After all, looks don't matter tuppence to a man. The great thing is wisdom. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. I remember a General Knowledge Paper in my Mays. One of the questions was "Give a list of the chief coaling-stations you would pass on your way to New Zealand." The only two I could think of were Cyprus and Rickett Smith. I never heard whether I got full marks: probably not. But since that day knowledge has come for I have a friend in the Admiralty. He was a very high wrangler the year I wasn't, and just as Fisher is the man behind the First Lord, so he is the man behind Fisher; at least, he tells me so. And he buys his tobacco by the knot—or is it the quid?—and plays the Hague Convention at bridge, and (as I say) knows all the coaling-stations from Cambridge to New Zealand.
Wisdom Lingers. What a splendid title for a novel. You would expect a fine moral tale, and it would turn out to be the story of the Lingers family. Wisdom K. Lingers. There you have the essence of successful book-naming. I hand the idea to you, Charles, in the certainty that you would steal it anyhow.
Do you know anything about gas? I buy a lot every week for my geyser. You get about 1000 for half-a-crown. A thousand what? I don't know; but I like to take part in these great business transactions, and I am now writing to ask if they could make it 1200 seeing that I am a regular customer. No harm in asking.
III
DEAR CHARLES,—Do you truly want me to recommend you something to read? Well, why not try the serial story in some ha'penny paper? There you get a glimpse of the real thing. I turned idly to "Lepers in Israel" (or whatever it is called) last night, and found myself suddenly up to the neck in tragedy. Lord Billingham ...
Charles, you're a married man, tell me if it really is so. The gentle Pamela is urged by a cruel mother to espouse Lord Billingham for his money's sake. Lord B. is a vulgar brute, I'm afraid; in any case Pamela is all for young Prendergast; but one must be sensible, you know, and money does make a difference, doesn't it? So she becomes Lady Billingham; and a year or two later Prendergast comes back from South Africa to find that it is he who is the real Lord Billingham after all. (I got most of this from the "synopsis," which enables you to start the story now, so I can't say how it was they overlooked him in the first place.) It would be extremely cruel (you see that, Charles?) to talk about it, because Pamela would then become plain Mrs Stubbs, and no money at all; so Prendergast decides to say nothing to anybody. But he was reckoning without Mrs Trevelyan, no less. Mrs Trevelyan finds out the secret, and threatens Prendergast that she will tell everybody that he is the real Lord Billingham unless he marries her. So of course he has to.
It is at this moment that we meet Captain Pontifax. Captain Pontifax is in love with Mrs Trevelyan, at least he thinks he is, and he says that if she doesn't marry him he will let on about what happened to Mr Trevelyan, who was supposed to have died of old age. At the same time the news gets out that Prendergast is really Lord Billingham, and so Pamela does become Mrs Stubbs; and, as Prendergast cannot honourably withdraw from the alliance he is about to contract with Mrs Trevelyan, it looks as though she is going to be Lady Billingham. But on the eve of the wedding a body is found at the bottom of the old chalk quarry.... Whose? ...
What I want to hear from you, Charles, is, Do people always get married for this sort of reason? Are you really the Duke of Norfolk, and did Kitty discover your secret and threaten to disclose it? Oh, you coward! I don't mind anybody knowing that I am the true Earl Billingham.
About the body. We shall know to-morrow. I think it's Captain Pontifax myself, but I will send you a telegram.