I am becoming popular at the club: they took 12/- out of me yesterday. I must set my teeth and get it back though.
The influx of odious parents, he writes on 18.6.16, with their loathy, freckled criminals of offspring has flustered the waiters and is spoiling all my meals. What I do now is to change for dinner after all and come in exactly an hour late for meals. They have some way of keeping the food—such as it is—piping hot; and so I do not suffer unduly for avoiding the sight of some, at least, of the carroty-headed boys and their thick-ankled sisters....
Ah well! I can begin to count the days until I am back among you; and a glad day that will be for me! Nobody in the world, I think, hates either rest or enjoyment so much as I do.
Good-bye. I am going for a walk. I tell you frankly, I am going for a walk. I tell you this frankly....
On Teixeira’s return to the department, our correspondence was suspended until I went to Cornwall for a week’s leave in August. When I wrote in praise of my surroundings, he replied with a warning:
You are probably too young ever to have heard of ... a play-actress ... who brought a breach of promise action ... and earned the then record damages of £10,000. She took a cottage somewhere the other day and brought her mother to live in it. The mother said, “This is just the sort of place I like; I shall be happy here,” then fell down the stairs and was dead in half an hour....
... Remember me to the Atlantic....
The next letter contained a story from Ireland:
Sligo, 18 August 1916.