_Flipperty--flipperty_--However, you know all about that now.

Since this great discovery of mine, life has been a more
pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic
possibilities about Letters setting forth on their journey from our
floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything.
Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement
for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that
we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic
letter go _flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty_ ... and
behold! there is no FLOP ... and still it goes
on--_flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty_--growing fainter in the
distance ... until it arrives at some wonderland of its own. One day it
must happen so. For we cannot listen always for that FLOP, and hear it
always; nothing in this world is as inevitable as that. One day we shall
look at each other with awe in our faces and say, "But it's still
flipperting!" and from that time forward the Hill of Campden will be a
place holy and enchanted. Perhaps on Midsummer Eve--

At any rate I am sure that it is the only way in which to post a letter
to Father Christmas.

Well, what I want to say is this: if I have been a bad correspondent in
the past I am a good one now; and Celia, who was always a good one, is a
better one. It takes at least ten letters a day to satisfy us, and we
prefer to catch ten different posts. With the ten in your hand together
there is always a temptation to waste them in one wild rush of
flipperties, all catching each other up. It would be a great moment, but
I do not think we can afford it yet; we must wait until we get more
practised at letter-writing. And even then I am doubtful; for it might be
that, lost in the confusion of that one wild rush, the magic letter would
start on its way--_flipperty--flipperty_--to the never-land, and we
should forever have missed it.

So, friends, acquaintances, yes, and even strangers, I beg you now to
give me another chance. I will answer your letters, how gladly. I still
think that Napoleon (or Canute or the younger Pliny--one of the
pre-Raphaelites) took a perfectly correct view of his correspondence ...
but then _he_ never had a letter-box which went

_Flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty
flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty
flipperty--FLOP._

HEAVY WORK

Every now and then doctors slap me a