“Old mother, don’t you think if I get on fast and learn everything I could come back soon? I keep remembering what the Pater said, but it makes you feel pretty sick to think you’ve got to stop here for always. There’s a man coming here from to-morrow to give me lessons, and I’m not going to play any larks on him or anything. I’m just going to do Latin and any mortal thing he sticks on to me. I’ll know an awful lot in a year, old mother, if I work like that, and I’d soon get a good billet in Sydney, specially now I know German talk. Get him to let me come back, mother; what’s the good of tin to you when you don’t want to spend it?
“Your affectionate son,
“Alf.”
Letters followed from week to week.
“Jan. 19, Strasburg.
“Dear Mother,
“We came to this town for a few days; there’s rather a good clock here, it would interest you. Grandfather isn’t well. He’s rather a little man, and his nose is a bit like a hook, and he gets gout. I don’t like him much. He’s always asking you the past participle of pouvoir, and saying just when you’re enjoying your pudding, and don’t want all [262] ]the table to look at you, ‘Dative plural of a sharp weapon?’
“I think he gives Aunt Helene a pretty bad time; he’s always jumping on her, and sometimes he tells her she couldn’t get married because no one would have her with such a temper as she’s got. She never says anything back, I don’t believe she’s got a temper at all, and she’s jolly nice to him and looks after him like anything. I believe she’d like to get married to Vollmar—he’s the chap that’s started to teach me music; he wouldn’t have her of course, he’s as young and nice as anything, and he’s gone on young Clinch’s governess, they’re stopping near us in Wiesbaden. When he comes for my lessons she dresses herself up like anything and keeps coming in the room, and sometimes she drops books so that he has to pick them up, and once she pretended she was fainting, and he had to hold her up, and he looked as if he didn’t like it. Wish she would get married—that would be one lot of money less to wait here for.
“I’m getting on like anything, mother. I heard Grandfather say yesterday, ‘And what do you think of your pupil’s capabilities, Herr Oppenheim?’ And old Opp Beir,—he’s a decent old boy—said, ‘Cababeelitays,—ach, ya, he brogress along with dem first glass.’ And I really am getting on, mother, I never grafted like this before. I asked Grandfather to let me learn shorthand, and he was quite pleased, and said it would [263] ]be very useful if he decided to let me have any active share in the firm. Was it mean of me, old mother? He lets me learn anything, and I couldn’t tell him I wanted to learn so that I could get a billet in Sydney. Don’t you think if I cram very hard all June I could come back? I wouldn’t be any expense to the Pater now; I know music and whips of things I usen’t to, and I could easily get something to do, and p’raps help to pay Freddie’s school bills. Dear old mother, do let me,—honour bright, I’ve tried like anything not to want to come back, but it’s pretty awful. If you see a girl go running down the street and her hair’s brown you can’t help thinking of Weenie. Sometimes just flowers make you feel sick; there’s some here in the garden, and they’re jonquils like those old Clif brought home for you that day, and I never go to that part of the garden.
“Your loving old Alf.”