February 11.
This is the joyful day.[107] Your telegram was handed to me at lunch, so all the Inner Brotherhood had the benefit. The Canon said you ought to have used the comparative degree, so as to leave me an opportunity of returning the superlative.
What a journey you had, poor dears! It does not seem so certain after all that we should be safe for comfort on a long voyage. Mytsie and Char. had a worse passage than you, the wind was dead against them all the way.
It is indeed shocking about the Dean.[108] I heard it before you did. I will write to him by this mail.
So glad you had such a good concert. If you only knew how I was longing to enjoy it with you....
An adagio movement has now followed the allegro, and I am looking forward to a presto home as a finale.
My news is not much. My cold was very bad from Saturday to Monday, but I slept most of the time straight on. If it were not for my eyes I should be almost as well as ever I was.
I read Walter Hobhouse's child story, and Mrs. —— capped it with another. A little girl she knew asked whether, when she got to heaven, she might 'have a little devil up to play with.' Mytsie's nephew, when three years old, had a much prettier idea. On M. telling him that something had happened before he was born, he said, 'Then that was when I was still in heaven.' 'Yes,' answered M., 'but what was heaven like?' 'Oh, there I played with angels, and there was nothing but Christmas trees.'
Are not the debates first-rate? It seems to me I never read so many good speeches as those of Balfour, Bryce, and Chamberlain. But the measure itself is absurd.