(What’s this? “Your” Billy? It can’t be. Oh, no. It’s his disgraceful handwriting. It’s the “r” being scrawled into the “s” like that. “Yours, Billy,” is how it really reads. How stupid of me not to see that at once! Then there’s a bit across the top.)
“Six-forty train Porth Cariad on Saturday. You might write and tell me how you do like the place; and you might answer at once, even if it’s only for the girls to take it to the post.”
So, for the benefit of Blanche and Theo, I will write at once; I’ll do it out here, in pencil on my pad, as I’ve so often taken down his own letters. (One of these days I shall tell him how I loathed it, and how utterly impossible his dictation was!)
“Porth Cariad. July —, 1913.
“Dear Sir,
“Your favour of yesterday’s date to hand, for which we thank you.”
(There! I wonder how he’ll like that. Will he think that it goes on all through?)
“The lovely sweets really were appreciated; but I didn’t let Theo bag them all, nor take the pale-blue satin tie-up to make a bow for Cariad, which was what she wanted to do. So then she said of course Nancy would want to keep that ribbon to tie round all your letters. She does notice everything, doesn’t she?
“As for how I like this place, I simply love it, and the cottages—I’m in the bigger one with your mother, and Theo and Blanche are together in the other until you come—and I love the sand-hills with the sea-holly and little prickly brambly roses and tiny purple pansies growing all over them,”
(I might slip a pansy from this place that he’s fond of into the envelope? No, I mightn’t. There’s no Theo to “notice” at his end.)