'Don't mind my grumbling. I think that it is very ungrateful of me to do so, when, this year especially, I am receiving such blessings; it is partly because I am very much occupied, working at high pressure, partly because I do not check my foolish notions, and let matters worry me. I don't justify it a bit; nor must you suppose that because I am very busy just now, I am really the worse for it. The change to sea life will set me all to rights again; and I feel that much work must be done in a little time, and a wise man would take much more pains than I do to keep himself in a state fit to do it.
'I have told you about our manner of life here. Up at 5, when I go round and pull the blankets, not without many a joke, off the sleeping boys, many of the party are already up and washing. Then, just before prayers, I go into the kitchen and see that all is ready for breakfast. Prayers at 5.45 in English, Mota, Baura, &c., beginning with a Mota Hymn, and ending with the Lord's Prayer in English. Breakfast immediately after: at our table Mr. Pritt, Mr. Kerr, and young Atkin who has just joined us. At the teachers' table, five Norfolk Islanders, Edward (a Maori), five girls and two of their husbands, and the three girls being placed at this table because they are girls; Melanesians at the other three tables indiscriminately. There are four windows, one at the north, three at the east side. The school and chapel, in one long modern building, form the corresponding wing on the eastern side of my little room, and the boys dormitories between.
'We are daily expecting the vessel, though it will be a quick passage for her if she comes in the next ten days, and then what a bustle!
'We send Dudley and his wife away to Canterbury for eight or nine months; he is so weak as to make the change, which I had urged him to try for some time past, quite necessary.
'Next Sunday a Confirmation at Orehunga, eight miles off; back to Auckland for catechising and Baptism at 3 p.m. and evening service at 6.30, and never a word of either sermon written, and all the school work! Never mind, a good growl to you is a fine restorative, and really I get on very well somehow.
'Well, good-bye, you dear Sisters,
'Your affectionate Brother,
'J. C. P.'
On the last day of February came the new 'Southern Cross,' and two delightful notes announced it to the Vicar of Hursley and to myself in one envelope.
'St. Andrew's: Feb. 28, 1863.