It is a boy, so Francis ought to be in the seventh heaven of happiness as he now has a direct heir for the succession. Ought to be, but somehow isn't. Since I began to get better and take notice he does not seem as exuberant as I expected. He isn't well. I have a sort of idea he had a fainting fit in the House of Lords just when my crisis was coming on and that they kept it back from me. But I saw an allusion to it in an old Times which had somehow found its way into my sitting-room.
The infant is to be named James Francis Addington for ancestral reasons. I do not feel energetic enough to contest. I should have preferred one Christian name only—a multitude of names is so démodé and must be so confusing to the recording angels who don't recognize surnames. I wanted something a little baffling and out of the common such as Clitheroe or Passavant. Clitheroe is not the name of any relation, but I liked its sound—like the wind in the reeds, don't you think?—and it would have been a new departure.
Little Clithy looks rather wizen as he lies asleep in his bassinette, but at his age most infants seem incredibly old and cynical, as though they were just finishing some life cycle and were peevish at beginning another.
Of course, Clitheroe's coming has quite ruled me out of the Jubilee festivities. Suzanne Feenix has been doing all the running, and quietly pushing her husband whilst I have been unable to secure any advancement for mine, who now seems quite lacking in ambition. Suzanne, by the bye, l'on dit très toquée of another good-looking African explorer, a rival of yours from West Africa. A pity you did not make her acquaintance—as I advised you to do—before you left. She has any amount of influence with Lord W.
How is the missionaryess? I am glad she was safely married to her missionary and withdrew herself into the interior. I feared otherwise there was going to be another entanglement: for I don't believe in the least you were a Galahad and faithful only to my memory in the days when we played at being engaged. I don't see why I should be specially interested in this young woman because she came from Aldermaston and her father is one of our tenants.... However, when I can once more ride I'll go over and look her people up and report on them. But I only hope you won't turn her head by taking all this interest in her affairs. So like you! And to think you once reproached me for inconstancy!
All the same, dear Roger, I do miss you—dreadfully. Francis will keep up the grand manner and won't tell me any cabinet secrets. My brothers and sisters don't interest me, mother is too anxious about father's affairs to leave him for long, and when she is here I am nervous about discussing them for fear they may want to borrow money from Francis.
I have sent Maud an invitation because she reminds me faintly of you....
SIBYL.
From Mrs. Josling to Mrs. John Baines.
Church Farm