Your unhappy friend,
Cynthia
The very first thing I had done after getting over the first shock of happiness about my engagement was to wireless the news to Juliet Savage and ask her to be my best woman. Her answer was full of her usual good spirits and infectious optimism:
Ginger, you angel,—
This is the best for years. I knew you’d go and do it if I let you go careering round America without me. I always thought Wynefryde would go first, but you’ve got ahead of her. As to assisting at the obsequies, you may count on me. Will it be at Grey? I should like to have old Rowlands saying, “Wilt thou on the one hand have this woman to thy wedded wife”—or have they given up all that sort of thing nowadays? Anyhow, I’ll mug up the service, and be word-perfect on the night. Now, what’s he like? You might have been more generous in your wireless: “Am engaged to short American with slight squint” would have told me the worst at once. But of course he’s tall? You always hated small men. I believe you’d be Mrs. Hoskyns by now, living on Boar’s Hill and calling on the other dons’ wives, if it weren’t for that. And pots of money, of course, or he couldn’t be “Lord”—what a comfort to have an aristocracy who can be sure where their next meal’s coming from! I shall lose no time in telling him about all your lurid past, because I suppose after the second time I’ve been to stay he’s sure to turn nasty about me and say, “My dear, I can’t have that woman in the house again; her cigars are too strong! it hangs in the curtains.” And then my lot would be an Opal-less one—oh very bad! So it’s just as well he should know I have a guilty hold over you.... The paper’s just come in, with a wirelessed portrait of him in it—it’s even more hopeless than most wirelessed portraits. They ought really to put “The features, reading from left to right, are ...” underneath them. You will have sent me a proper one by now. Only I do want you to come back, and tell me all about him. Darling, I am so excited.
Your neglected
Juliet
Canon Dives was not slow to resume a somewhat interrupted acquaintance: his letter was, as usual, a masterpiece of diction:
My dear Miss Winterhead,—
So East and West have met; I hope, nay, I am sure, that you have made choice of a suitable partner; I dare hardly hope that you have found one worthy of you! Pray accept, from Mrs. Dives and myself, the warmest possible felicitations. And now, you will pardon a word or two of sermonizing from one who has watched, with a very real interest, your brilliant career at Oxford.