MY DEAR HUGH.—Thank you very, very much for the sweet little butterdish. It's ripping. Do try to get down, Hugh, there's a good boy! If you can find time to choose me such a nice present—I know what you are, it must have taken you hours—surely you could take the day off for once. Say yes.
In tremendous haste, and thanking you again and again,
Your affectionate cousin,
MURIEL.
P.S.—I've just heard that Mr. Parsley, who is to marry us, is very strict about obedient weddings, and I promised Geraldine I wouldn't "obey" if she didn't. Now it's my turn. Tell me something to do.
30th December, 1913.
MY GOOD MURIEL,—That's a caviare dish! Caviare dishes, I understood, were all the rage just now, and here am I slaving away to be in the fashion, and you calmly write back and say, "Thank you very much for the butt—" My good Muriel!
I really wanted to send you something quite different, something equally novel but more seasonable; no less, in fact, than a nose-muff or nose-warmer. It is a little idea of my own, the Melbrook "Rhinotherm." Briefly, the mechanism consists of pieces of heated charcoal, potato or what-not, encased in some non-conducting material, the whole being then unostentatiously affixed to the frigid end of the nose. Stupidly, I forgot to take a plaster cast of your nose. You'll forgive me, won't you?
And now about coming down on the happy day. I feel very hurt about it. You know perfectly well that I wanted you to be married on a Saturday, but you wouldn't. It isn't as though you get married every day, and I do think you might have considered me a little more. But, even if I did come, even if by working all night Monday and Tuesday I could scrape together a few hours of freedom, I know what it would be. I should never be allowed in the vestry afterwards, while all the fun was going on. And yet you have the effrontery to sit there and ask my help in evading your, responsibilities as a married woman. Still, if you promise to breathe not a word of this to any woman I may marry hereafter, here's a dead snip for you. Listen! When you come to the words "to love, cherish and to obey," you simply drop the second "to" (nobody will miss it) and run the "d" of the "and" into the "obey," and lo! we have a French word, to wit, dauber, meaning to cuff, drub or belabour. What say you to that, my bonny bride? I think that deserves an extra large slice of cake, to put under my pillow. And I say, Muriel, I do hope there won't be any of those rotten cassowary seeds in it. If there are, for pity's sake rake them out and give them to someone who likes them. And I'll have his share of the marzipan.