305 ORPHANAGE ROAD
ERDINGTON
B I R M I N G H A M

April 2nd. 1937

My Dear,
After a telephone conversation with your Very Nice Uncle I have arranged to take Punch for his new glasses on Wednesday, we’ll have to risk the Law this week-end.  So I shall be here at Erdington waiting for you. I could meet you here at 5.30 I think, or perhaps six o’clock is dead safe and will give you time to have your tea in peace. At the 17 bus terminus, then, at just before six. Hooray ! At last this* devastating separation is drawing to a close, but the Dairymaid is nearly written. Next week should be easier, Tuesday I expect, Wednesday at your Uncle’s if you like to come, and. Thursday or Friday to ourselves. And perhaps next week-end as well.

In the year, you, as an honest and courageous Worker, as opposed to me, who is a Drone, you have two weeks holiday, in which you are Free, Your own Mistress, and A Lady of Independent means. Could I dare ask you to spend some if not all of those fourteen days with me ? Couldn’t we have a holiday together ?  I have ideas, for discussion. The Broads, perhaps, and for Proprieties sake we could take either Oliver or Stanley as chaperone.  Thus we could have a three berth boat (You respectably sleeping forward), and we should have someone to help in the drying of the breakfast things, and we should also, (Herein lies my subtlety, and this is entre-nous) have someone we could send off to bed at nine o’clock with authority and have the evenings to ourselves. Its an idea. I have other ideas as well. But perhaps it is asking too much.

It rains, let it, we’ll picnic in a Barn on Sunday, or go to the Musical Service at Worcester, and Damn the weather.  Though I have secret information that the sun will shine in April eagerness and the air will be soft. If it isn’t we’ll be soft and go out in the weather. It’s funny, the more I see of you the more I like you and the more I don’t see you the even more I like you.  Absence and all that I suppose. I don’t know as Soames Forsyte used to say.

Your silence about Young English is nerve wracking. Are you seeking a gentle way to let me out? Some honeyed phrase to serve your critical conscience and my paternal egoism ?

A demain, alors a six heures moins cinq, près du Tom-Tom.

Two things have come back from Punch. Oh dear, hold my Head and croon, very softly. I’ve just had a hair-cut, anyhow.

Ever your
P.S. When is your holiday? It seems as though the most convenient for me is the middle two or the last two weeks in August, that is according to Press Days and the Landlady’s arrangements. If you won’t come away with me I’ll have it by staying at a hotel in Moseley and sit in your garden all day.