318, BANCROFT ROAD,
Sunday Afternoon.
DEAR JOE:
Goodness knows what has happened to this usually placid house. Never again will I complain to you that there is no excitement in Wolverhampton.
I got home from Birmingham yesterday noon and since then everything has been perfectly absurd. I can only believe you have gone balmy.
First comes your wire about Mr. Blair and your having hurt your arm playing soccer. What you can have been doing at soccer I can't conceive. I supposed it was a mistake for hockey, or else some kind of a twit. Well, I couldn't see what I could do to help a historical student but I showed Dad the wire and the old dear said he would write Mr. Blair a line.
I had just settled down to help Mother with some sewing when along comes your second wire, addressed to her. Mother and I threw up our hands and screamed! Certainly we thought you were off your crumpet. Why on earth should you send us another cook when you know Ethel has been here for so long? I read the wire forward and backward but it could mean nothing else. It said: Have found very good cook out of place am sending her to you earnestly recommend give her a trial reliable woman but eccentric name Eliza Thick will call Sunday morning.
Well, we all had a good laugh over this, and wondered what kind of a joke you were up to. Then, after supper, to our amazement, came a third wire—not from you, this one, but to Dad, and who do you suppose from? The Bishop of Oxford if you please! Dad was so flustered (you know how telegrams excite him: they offend all his antiquarian instincts!)—well, the Bishop said—Am sending my favourite curate to call on you magnificent young fellow excellent family very worthy chap will be in Wolverhampton a day or two anxious to have him meet your family.
Well, this rather flabbergasted us, but Dad took it rather as a matter of course, after the first surprise. He used to know the Bishop well—in fact, he dedicated his book to him. “Quite all right, my dear,” Dad kept saying. “I dare say the young man has some antiquarian problems to talk over. Too bad I'm so crippled with rheumatism.”
After supper along came Mr. Dunton, and began to talk about a charming young American who had been calling on him, and who did it prove to be but your friend Mr. Blair, who had been quite put out of our minds by the later telegrams. So Dad sat down right away and wrote a note to Mr. Blair at the Blue Boar asking him for luncheon to-day, and sent it up by the gardener's boy.