Her people are very well off, her father being on the Stock Exchange. They live at Wimbledon and have a full-sized table. Do write and send me your congratulations. I have not seen her father yet, but my idea is to make him take to me so much that he finds a place for me in his office. As there are no sons, he will probably want someone to carry on the business and I don’t doubt my ability to pick up the threads very quickly. I wish it was Lloyd’s, because I am told that is child’s play, but I don’t doubt I could cut a figure on the Stock Exchange too.
Stella has a retroussé nose and the most adorable smile. We have thousands of things in common, besides a love of dancing. She says she doesn’t want an engagement ring, she would much rather have a deer-hound, so I am trying to get one. I wonder if anybody breeds them in your neighbourhood?
Father wants me to go to Oxford, just as if there had been no War, but I don’t feel that I could possibly endure the restrictions there. Besides, what would Stella do? During the War she worked too, for all kinds of Charities. She was splendid. When you feel well enough, you must let me bring her down to play and sing to you.—Your affectionate nephew,
Roy
LXXIII
Verena Raby to Richard Haven
Dear Richard,—Some of your special privileges seem to be coming my way, for I am now largely occupied in writing letters of counsel, chiefly to nephews and nieces in whom the fever of love burns or does not burn. Theodore’s girl is the last—so very much a child of the moment as to think that wanting a thing and having it should be synonymous. I am feeling very grateful I am not a mother and I felicitate with you on your non-paternity. Parents just now are anything but enviable. None the less....
It’s funny how the young people come to me for help, just as though I were a flitting Cupid instead of a weary stationary horizontal middle-aged female, whose only traffic in the emotions occurred in the dim and distant past and is for ever buried.—Good night,
V.