ersuade him to
go home.

"Quit your job, Page," he urged. "You have other big tasks waiting you
at home. Why don't you go back?"

"No--no--not now."

"But, Page," urged Dr. Buttrick, "you are going to lay down your life."

"I have only one life to lay down," was the reply. "I can't quit now."

_To Mary E. Page_[75]

London, May 12, 1918.

DEAR MARY:

You'll have to take this big paper and this paint brush pen--it's
all the pen these blunt British have. This is to tell you how very
welcome your letter to Alice is--how very welcome, for nobody
writes us the family news and nothing is so much appreciated. I'll
try to call the shorter roll of us in the same way:

After a miserable winter we, too, are having the rare experience of
a little sunshine in this dark, damp world of London. The constant
confinement in the city and _in the house_ (that's the worst of
it--no outdoor life or fresh air) has played hob with my digestion.
It's not bad, but it's troublesome, and for some time I've had the
feeling of being one half well. It occurred to me the other day
that I hadn't had leave from my work for four years, except my
short visit home nearly two years ago. I asked for two months off,
and I've got it. We are going down by the shore where there is
fresh air and where I can live outdoors and get some exercise. We
have a house that we can get there and be comfortable. To get away
from London when the weather promises to be good, and to get away
from people seemed a joyous prospect. I can, at any time I must,
come to London in two hours.

The job's too important to give up at this juncture. This, then, is
the way we can keep it going. I've no such hard task now as I had
during the years of our neutrality, which, praise God! I somehow
survived, though I am now suffering more or less from the physical
effects of that strain. Yet, since I have had the good fortune to
win the confidence of this Government and these people, I feel that
I ought to keep on now until some more or less natural time to
change comes.

Alice keeps remarkably well--since her influenza late in the
winter; but a rest away from London is really needed as much by her
as by me. They work her to death. In a little while she is to go,
by the invitation of the Government and the consent o