[Telegram]
Am at Garland’s Hotel, tell me what to do.
Nicholas
XCIX
Nesta Rossiter to Roy Barrance
Dear Roy,—Aunt Verena asks me to say that she will be delighted if you will come for a few days next week, but she warns you that you will find things very slow here. We are a small party, the liveliest of us being my little Lobbie, whom I don’t think you have seen. As she is now six, this shows that you have neglected your kith and kin. If you care for fishing you had better bring your rod, as the Arrow is not far off. And I wish you would go to that shop in the Haymarket just above the Haymarket Theatre and get one of those glass coffee machines—medium size. I should also like a biggish box of Plasticine for Lobbie.—Your affectionate cousin,
Nesta
C
Verena Raby to Nicholas Devose
Dear,—I have thought much since your last letter and more still since the telegram came. Please do not come yet. I could not bear it. Old as the rest of me has become, all that appertains to you is preserved, as though in some heart-cell apart, and as fresh as yesterday. I am not equal to the emotion of seeing you just yet, nor am I sure that I want to. The you that I know is no longer the you that others see—he is young and ambitious and often masterful and yet with such strange fits of misgiving. But I should love to have a portfolio of your sketches, if you could trust them to the railway. Choose those that you think the best or that you made under the happiest conditions. No, let there be one or two when you were least happy.