By a most remarkable phenomenon your Christmas letters arrived on Christmas Day, which proves that all things come to them as waits. They came just as Duncan & I were going out of the door into the cold & the rain to a Christmas bun- fightbun-fight, & I thought, & also said, My word! this is all right for the boys, but stiff on the poor blooming postmen. For as may have been reported in the local press, the weather here was such as is rarely seen at Christmas. I shall answer your letters first — as another mail came last Saturday I have two lots on which to comment— & then go on to the news, such as it is. First of all, I am very glad that the last news I had of you was that you were on the upgrade; you must indeed be sick of bed by this time; but I hope the old pump is working hard & manfully & doing all that is required of it & a lot more. I am very sorry I can't come in to see you of a morning & evening & give you the news of the day; I can't help thinking that what you want is a good hearty chat with a bright cove like me, full of the milk of human kindness, & running over with information on all necess- arynecessary subjects. Nurses are all right, I don't doubt, & far be it from me to fling mud at Nurse (or she may by now be Sister) Beagle- holeBeaglehole, but there's a difference. Now if I were on the scene I bet you'd be out of bed & on your pins in no time & off down town with your scarf & vanity bag & all other supplementary luxuries in a brace of shakes with a hey & a ho & a hey nonnino! & afternoon tea in whatever is the flashest place in town these days. But of course bereft of my stimulating presence I suppose you can hardly do that yet awhile. Still, let's hope it will come, & that right speedily, because I shall be sorry to hear of you in bed for many more letters. 21 Brunswick Square, top floor front, expects every mother to do her duty, & yours is to get well as soon as possible. So keep on with the good work. By the way, you haven't said lately whether you want any more books to read or not, so I suppose you have got down to Gibbon properly at last. It is a pity that I am too much occupied otherwise at present, or I might have been able to give you a race with it; & being as I am, circumstanced in the middle of the constitutional history of Jamaica & Barbados, you have an unfair advantage, & being a woman, I doubt not that you will not scruple to use it.

Thank you very much for the Stickepath address—there's no knowing when I may not want to use it. And thank you very much for the cash. You will be delighted, nay, overjoyed to hear that I spent your half of it very wisely & well, together with Auntie's excellent contribution ; it would be hopeless to make you guess how, so I may as well tell you right away — I put it towards the cost of a new overcoat. Daddy's half I spent not so wisely & well, you will be extremely sorry to hear; as I joined Keith's & Frannie's 5/- to it & purchased the two classic works of the late Albert Venn Dicey K.C., i.e. The Law of the Constitution & Law & Opinion in England. I have been very long wanting these, so I trust you will forgive me. What I did your with 5 bob from Geoffrey I'm not quite sure, but it either went towards the coat or a new hat or a volume of Marley, so you can take your pick out of that lot to please yourself. The coat happened thuswise. I think I told you that my lady friends were so far forgetting their status as ladies as to make pointed remarks about the coat I left home with; so much so that I said All right! I'll wait & see if there's a sale after Christmas where they have anything flash enough for me going expen- sivelyexpensively enough, & then perhaps I'll trot down & give the coats a once over. And this got a week or two's peace. Well, a couple of days after Christmas I was bugging down to the Albert Hall to get tickets for a Folk Dance Festival & I got carried right past as far as Barker's in High Street Kensington. This happened not because I was asleep, but because I was on top of the bus & evidently the conductor did not see me go up & as it was a very cold day did not think anybody would be such a mug as to travel on top — Well, I came downstairs at the Albert Hall but the bus didn't stop & as I stood right behind the conductor with my hand touching him & he didn't see me I thought my word! If I don't say anything or stop the bus I might away with this ride buckshee. So the bus kept going on for a mile or so more & the conductor didn't turn round & I said nothing. And when it did stop I hopped off very quickly & crossed the road & found myself under the lee of Barker's Sale, having travelled from Tottenham Court Road for nothing, & it is 3d worth to the Albert Hall alone. So I patted myself on the back & haven't done admiring myself yet. Well, I had a look at the coats in Barker's & thought one or two of them might do & then padded back through the snow to the Albert Hall & caught another bus back, whereon the conductor was a bit more spry than the other one. Now it happened that I was having a discussion with Helen Allen on the principles of barter, & she said that in London, just as on the Continent, you were always expected to argue the point about the price of an article, & that you might get a quid knocked off if you were lucky. Now that sort of thing revolts me, I said, but I'll tell you what — you come down with me to Barker's & buy me a coat on that principle, & I'll pay all your expenses & shout you lunch as well. All right, says she. So last Monday we goes. And I must say I've rarely spent a more wearing (2 senses) morning. I put 'emthem on & I put 'emthem off; & by the time I had finished I was so dead beat I could hardly stand; & found I had forked out £4../4-6. And then just as we were on the last flight of stairs & I thought I was safe, she said, I really thought think you ought to have a new hat. So my spirit being broken, I said My God! all right; & had to fork out 10/9 more for a new hat. This hurt me more than the coat really, because I swore when I bought that hat at home that it would be the only hat I ever bought between then & the day I got back home ; & now I stand per- juredperjured in the eyes of the Almighty. And then about 4 days afterwards, when I had recovered myself, it dawned on me that the confounded girl had not got anything knocked off the price of the blooming clothes. I carried out my side of the bargain, too, down to the last detail, lunch in a German restaurant in Soho, to give the Dago joints a rest. It just goes to show that you can't trust women. I suppose you will admire her for it, too. Anyhow the coat looks all right, a very refined gentlemanlike superior (to quote Jane) dark grey , while the hat is a lighter grey & good enough to keep the rain off. In addition to these new clothes I have of course your scarf & the tie from Ern. The tie is wearable, & no doubt formal thanks is due to Ern for it; but as I believe I have already pointed out that I buy my ties at Woolworth's these days for 6d, I can I am sure leave future donors to draw their own conclusion. But the scarf is admirable beyond admiration, & I must thank you very much indeed for it, combineding, as it does, an even more refined appearance than my coat & being equally warm, & knitted as I flatter myself few women in the universe can knit a scarf. I wore it through the very cold spell we had, with the result that the snow fell & harmed one not, & the rain & the sleet rushed down & only dripped off the end of my nose & the thaw came & nearly swept me away & I suffered no harm. Indeed though my feet were floating in water several times my chest was as dry as a bone & warm as a good coal-fire. I say this because ours is a gas fire, & though it was costing us 7/- a week for a while, it didn't make us perceptibly warmer. So I thank you for the scarf. While I am on the subject of thanks you might broadcast same to the various aunts who wrote to me, i.e. Auntie Nancy, Auntie Ada, Auntie Jess, principally, so I gathered, to thank me for the calendars I sent them last Christmas. This is real warmth. Auntie of course I shall answer separately. You might tender thanks to Geoffrey & Theo ; & tell Geoffrey that he used the same jokes in his note as he did last Christmas, & with a cove of my keeness of intellect & retentivity of memory this is not wise. Besides that jokes about sticks of lickerish are inherently unfair; & if a father is like that, what sort of a future can he expect for his child? Such communications merit no reply & will get none.

Thank you, Daddy, for your sound financial work on my behalf. I haven't collected the dough from Jimmy Parr yet, but will do so at an early date. The point about giving notice to the N. Pron. people was that if I wanted the cash urgently at the end of the year I could get it out without having to wait another year for it; but I suppose I could always raise a loan on it anyhow. As for the books I'm dashed if I know how much you owe me. The easiest way will be for you to count up the books which all had the prices marked in them I think, & then to subtract what I owe you — of which you have doubtless a note, being a more methodical cove than I am. And I daresay the result will be that I owe you about £5. It strikes me by the way that I haven't really sent you out many books — not half as many as I meant to. But among so many it is difficult to know what you would really like, or think worth forking out the cash for. I have seen lots of good old sets of Johnson & birds like that which would lend dignity to any gent's library; but as I can't afford them myself, I don't suppose you can either. I'll tell you what you might do, though — send me a list of anything you would fancy & I will keep my eyes skinned for it. It is enough to make a bloke weep, the things he has to pass by. I've never seen anything in the way of Hibbert Journals yet. You seem to get through a pretty miscellaneous lot of reading between you. I haven't read any Ludwig yet, though I bought his Napoleon. The publishers are all falling over themselves here to publish him; & when we were in Germany a Munich bookseller told us he was all the rage there — didn't think his Wilhelm II was at all his best, though. Of course they are pretty hard-boiled royalists in Bavaria. Ludwig has turned out an astonishing lot of stuff — he has done lives of Rem- brandtRembrandt & Goethe (a big two volvolume thing in German) & lord knows who besides the stuff translated. — stiff luck for Hilda Nicholls. She certainly had a voice, though she was a bit batty in the top story.— I though you would find some interesting charges in Harold Holt.— I am interested to hear that you are thinking of putting in for Horace Ward's job — when I first heard he was lumping it I thought of you, but thought the night work might put you off. Still there would be no brain fag about it — only sitting up (if you followed Horace's example) reading Greek & putting books away. I should certainly like to see you get the job; I suppose if it is advertised there will be a rush for it, but any little testimonial I can give you &cet cetera. I'm sure you would run it a darn sight better. I know Miss Isaacs wants to introduce the Dewey system into the classification of the books, & it's certainly time something was done. I suppose Joe will be in for the job too, so there ought to be a stirring contest. Will the screw be enough for you?— Horace was only getting £400, I think. —A great man, Ern, with his highbrow cobbers, Sutherland & so forth. I remeb remember I brought Sutherland up once & his main concern was to tell us where the last generation of philosophers but one got off. I don't know why Ern's so excited about some examiners — what did he expect, anyhow? I never growl. They treated me all right. But it seems that everybody connected with Tommy Hunter has got to kick up a row about something or other.

I shall now tell you how I spent Christmas—but no, it might be more wise to draw a veil over that, or at least give a genteel version. Anyhow, as you will have gathered, the weather was somethink cool — it turned to snow in the afternoon, & went on for a couple of days — then we had a nice old slushy thaw — now we are having floods. However this room is high & dry. Well, we found the Bed- fordBedford Arms a fine picturesque old pub, with leaded panes, & the bow window in the bar-parlour or whatever it may be called & chairs which looked as if they might fit into the novels of the divine Jane very well. So we sat there while dinners was coming to the final point of perfection & each had our ½ pint & passed the time away by composing limericks & putting pennies in a hospital box to see the clock go round. You see there is a clock face & if you put in a penny the hand moves one division, & if you put in ½d a half; but what we could not make out was why when we put in ½d & then 1d the 1d made the hand move 1½ spaces. Anyhow it only did it once & we wasted quite a lot of money trying to make it do it again. Still it was good business for the hospital. Then we moved on to dinner. We each, there being 8 of us — to wit, Duncan, McGrath, Hemming, Taylor, and a cobber of Hemming's from Paris, Manderson, Gardiner & Woodhouse, three architectural cobbers/reps, & me — got a present & a highly ornamental paper cap inside a cracker & a letter from Father Christmas. My present was a —cripes! I've forgotten the name of it, but it was one of those things with a scale that you bang on with two little hammers, like so