can
afford, financially and spiritually. I gather you're not a bankrupt
either way. I don't recall anything in Holy Writ that seems to require
dowdiness as necessary to salvation. If one's got money it's
fortunate--if money's got one--that's different. Which is my
platitudinous way of agreeing with the last postscript of your letter.
I know you're getting to look at things properly again. To lose one's
life certainly does not mean to kill it, and to give it away one
needn't fling it to the dogs. And when you do connect with your job
you'll recognize it and you'll know how to do it. I'd like to watch
you. Once get your imagination going properly again and the days are
rose and gold. Oh, not all of them--but a good many--enough.

I nearly forgot about Theodore. There's humor for you--Theodore, "The
Gift of God"--that's the name they gave him sixteen good years ago
somewhere over in Scotland as you'd have guessed from the rest of it,
which is Alan McGregor. He is an orphan, is Theodore, but he doesn't
wear the uniform of the Orphans' Home--far from it! He wears soft
raiment and lives in kings' houses, or what amounts to the same thing.
I am engaged in exorcising the devil out of him and in teaching him
enough Latin to get into a decent school at the earliest instant. The
Latin goes well--three nights a week from eight to half-past nine. But
the devil takes advantage of every one of those nine points of law
which possession is said to give, and doesn't go at all. I am the only
living person who knows how to define "charm." Charm is the most
conspicuous attribute of the devil, and young McGregor has got it.
Likewise other qualities, the ones, for instance, which make his name
so rather awfully funny. You'd have to know Theodore to appreciate
just how funny.

It was the rector who "wished" him on to me. The rector is one of his
guardians, and being Theodore's guardian is a business which requires
at least one undersecretary, and I'm that. Theodore and hot water have
the strongest affinity known to psychological chemistry. So I'm kept
busy. But it's all the keenest sport you can imagine, and it's going
to be tremendously worth while if I can make a success of it. He's the
right kind of bad, and he's getting ready to grow into a great, big,
straight out-and-outer, with a mind like lightning and a heart like one
of the sons of God. But that kind is always the worst risk. He has
the weapons to get him t