Precious mother,

I've been dying to write you at least six times a day since I posted my
letter to you the day before yesterday, but rules are rules, aren't
they, especially if one makes them oneself, because then the poor
little things are so very helpless, and have to be protected. I
couldn't have looked myself in the face if I'd started off by breaking
my own rule, but I've been thinking of you and loving you all the
time--oh, so much!

Well, I'm _very_ happy. I'll say that first, so as to relieve your
darling mind. I've seen Kloster, and played to him, and he was
fearfully kind and encouraging. He said very much what Ysaye said in
London, and Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him
standing on the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring
fascinated, while I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd
never been as close as that to a beard before. So I've been walking on
clouds with my chin well in the air, as who wouldn't? Kloster is a
little round, red, bald man, the baldest man I've ever seen; quite
bald, with hardly any eyebrows, and clean-shaven as well. He's the
funniest little thing till you join him to a violin, and then--! A
year with him ought to do wonders for me. He says so too; and when I
had finished playing--it was the G minor Bach--you know,--the one with
the fugue beginning:

[Transcriber's note: A Lilypond rendition of the music fragment can be
found at the end of this e-text.]

he solemnly shook hands with me and said--what do you think he