a pity
he's a parson!'

In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism. "He eats
nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
blue moon. He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
his wife. I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but--dash it all
I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up some
clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it." When the cream came,
he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found that
he had finished it himself. "We never talk about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm
always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but when
it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too; it
sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old, and we've
always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot
chap came over and founded us. The only black sheep I ever heard of is
Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here
to see Ted. I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were
married. Phew! That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering
round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost. Even now she
can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole;
thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
all that. Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."

"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
downright for me. Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the
devil of a free-thinker. He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We had
Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can't.
The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale. The doctor said a thing
which struck me. 'What divides us from the beasts? Will power: nothing
else. What's this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man's
will is invincible?' I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.
He's a clever fellow. I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when
it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:
'We're told this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie. I must
have