-- Mrs. Wilcox trailing in beautiful dresses down long
corridors, Mr. Wilcox bullying porters, etc. We females
are that unjust.

I shall be back Saturday; will let you know train later.
They are as angry as I am that you did not come too;
really Tibby is too tiresome, he starts a new mortal dis-
ease every month. How could he have got hay fever in
London? and even if he could, it seem hard that you
should give up a visit to hear a schoolboy sneeze. Tell
him that Charles Wilcox (the son who is here) has hay
fever too, but he's brave, and gets quite cross when we
inquire after it. Men like the Wilcoxes would do Tibby
a power of good. But you won't agree, and I'd better
change the subject.

This long letter is because I'm writing before break-
fast. Oh, the beautiful vine leaves! The house is covered
with a vine. I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was
already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No won-
der she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the
large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the
lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can
just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sop-
ping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the
hay that was cut yesterday -- I suppose for rabbits or
something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is
delicious. Later on I heard the noise of croquet balls,
and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox prac-
tising; they are keen on all games. Presently he started
sneezing and had to stop. Then I hear more clicketing,
and it is Mr. Wilcox practising, and then, "a-tissue, a-tis-
sue": he has to stop too. Then Evie come out, and
does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that is
tacked on to a greengage-tree -- they put everything to
use -- and then she says "a-tissue," and in she goes.
And finally Mrs. Wilcox reappears, trail, trail, still smell-
ing hay and looking at the flowers. I inflict all this on
you because once you said that life is sometimes life and
sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distin-
guish t'other from which, and up to now I have always

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