"DEAR MIDGETINA,--It's a strange fact, but while, to judge from
your letter, _you_ seem to be growing smaller, I (in spite of Miss
Stebbings's water porridge) am growing fatter. Now, which is the
tragedy? I _may_ come home on the 30th. If so, kill the fatted
calf; I will supply the birthday-cake. How foolish of you to keep
letters. I never do, lest I should remember the answers. Anyhow, I
shall not write again. But if, by any chance, Mr Crimble should
make another call, will you explain that my chief motive in not
singing at the concert was because I should have been a second
mezzo-soprano. One of two in one concert _must_ be superfluous.
Perhaps I did not explain this clearly; nor did I say how charming
I thought my double was.
"I am tired--of overwork. I have finished _Wuthering Heights_. It
is a mad, untrue book. The world is not like Emily Bronte's
conception of it. It is neither dream nor nightmare, Midgetina, but
wide, wide awake. And I am convinced that the poets are only
cherubs with sugar-sticks to their little rosebud mouths. I
abominate whitewash. As for 'putting people out of their misery,'
and cannibal beech-trees: no, fretful midge! If you could see me
sitting here looking down on rows and rows of vacant and hostile
faces--though one or two are infatuated enough--you would realize
that such a practice would lead me into miscellaneous infanticide.
"Personally, I never did think into things too painfully; though as
regards 'telling,' the reverse is _certainly_ the wiser course. So
you will forgive so short, and perhaps none too sweet, a letter
from your affec.--F."