CASA VERDA,
TAFIRA.
_17 Jan. 1903._
The news that we get of you out here is satisfactory rather than
satisfying--I mean that we have heard little, but it was all to the
good. The last intelligence takes you back to your home and I feel good
reason for hoping that long before now you have become reasonably
comfortable. What I wish you know.
All here goes well. I am having a supremely good time--the only pains
are those given by my conscience or by the voice that exists where
my conscience should be--but the remedies for moral twinges are not
difficult to come by in this world of sin--which also is (locally) a
world of corrupting sunshine.
I brought with me this time all the three supplementary volumes of
_Dict. Natl. Biog._ I stare at them and wonder how anybody can have
the energy to make such things. Even novels strike me as laborious
productions when the sun is at its best.
We have been having rain: and when it rains here you find that the roof
of your house has been surprised by the performance. I am now engaged
in drying a boxful of copied Year Book which unfortunately was left
beneath a weak point in the ceiling. Is it "ceiling" by the way? I
don't know, and while I am in the garden the dictionary is in the house
and I don't care a perrita (primarily little bitch but also a five
centimo piece) how this or any other word spells itself; and all this I
ascribe to the sun.
It will be a good day when I get a postcard signed L. S.--but don't be
in a hurry to send one before the spirit moves you.
Back at Hobbes again? I hope so. Florence joins me in hopes--as you can
well suppose.
Yours very affectionately,
F. W. MAITLAND.