I am writing this to wish you many and many a happy return of your
birthday to-morrow. I will drink your health if only I can remember,
and if you don’t mind--but perhaps you object?
You see, if I were to sit by you at breakfast, and to drink your tea,
you wouldn’t like _that_, would you? You would say, “Boo! hoo! Here’s
Mr. Dodgson’s drunk all my tea and I haven’t got any left!” So I am
very much afraid, next time Sybil looks for you, she’ll find you
sitting by the sad sea-wave, and crying, “Boo! hoo! Here’s Mr. Dodgson
has drunk my health, and I haven’t got any left!”
And how it will puzzle Dr. Maund, when he is sent for to see you! “My
dear Madam, I’m very sorry to say your little girl has got _no health
at all_! I never saw such a thing in my life!”
“Oh, I can easily explain it!” your mother will say. “You see, she
would go and make friends with a strange gentleman, and yesterday he
drank her health!”
“Well, Mrs. Chataway,” he will say, “the only way to cure her is to
wait till his next birthday, and then for _her_ to drink _his_ health.”
And then we shall have changed healths. I wonder how you’ll like mine!
Oh, Gertrude, I wish you wouldn’t talk such nonsense!
[39] From another letter to little Gertrude Chataway (1875).