Dear Babes in the Wood—Dear Lunatics in Love,

I’m not surprised—not at all. All the time we’ve been talking Paris and frocks I felt that it wasn’t a bit real—that you’d vanish into the blue some day to be married over the tongs¹ in the good old gipsy fashion. But you are a couple of lunatics! This idea of renouncing² a vast fortune is absurd. Colonel Race wanted to argue the matter, but I have persuaded him to leave the argument to time. He can administer the estate for Harry³—and none better. Because, after all, honeymoons⁴ don’t last forever—you’re not here, Anne, so I can safely say that without having you fly out at me like a little wild-cat—Love in the wilderness⁶ will last a good while, but one day you will suddenly begin to dream of houses in Park Lane, sumptuous⁷ furs, Paris frocks, the largest thing in motors and the latest thing in perambulators, French maids and Norland nurses! Oh, yes, you will!

But have your honeymoon⁵, dear lunatics, and let it be a long one. And think of me sometimes, comfortably putting on weight amidst the fleshpots!

Your loving friend,

Suzanne Blair.

P.S.—I am sending you an assortment⁸ of frying-pans as a wedding present, and an enormous terrine of paté de foie gras to remind you of me.

There is another letter that I sometimes read. It came a good while after the other and was accompanied by a bulky packet. It appeared to be written from somewhere in Bolivia.

My dear Anne Beddingfeld,

I can’t resist writing to you, not so much for the pleasure it gives me to write, as for the enormous pleasure I know it will give you to hear from me. Our friend Race wasn’t quite as clever as he thought himself, was he?

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